


Vale of Secrets

by yellowballs



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/M, Heterosexual Sex, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2018-12-08 05:35:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11639991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowballs/pseuds/yellowballs
Summary: This tale is a direct follow-on to "The Taming of the Sellsword".  Because the series has by now gone so far past the point in time in which I'm writing, it is useful to remember where everyone is.  After the Purple Wedding, Sansa Stark is missing, along with her husband, and a knight-made-fool.  This is still the Stockholm Syndrome Sansa, not the Queen in the North we see today.  A  vengeful Cersei has taxed her brother Jaime with finding the wolf girl.  Unbeknownst to her, he has taken along his trusted aide and secret lover/wife, Brienne, and has a very different mission in mind. Meanwhile, Bronn is looking forward to some easy time with his highborn wife and castle  in the Vale.





	1. Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

 

  
_By the Crone's teeth!  
_

Lenah curses inwardly and wipes her mouth, the nausea having come on suddenly.  She is fortunate to have covered the ground to the chamber pot in time.  Almost immediately, the foul contents threaten to induce a second wave, causing her to rush to the window and throw open the shutter for air.  The cool, mid-morning currents fill her lungs, settling her stomach as she leans out against the sandstone ledge.  The high turret of the lord's bedchamber at Copper Keep affords a commanding view -- one which Lenah checks oft of a day for the return of a certain sellsword.  As the tremors pass, she lends her eye fruitlessly to the hard-packed courtyard, lonely causeway, and vaulting cliffs that surround the castle.

  
"Milady." The one retainer who remained faithful throughout the War of the Five Kings to the halls to which she was pledged, hovers at the doorway, her arms laden with fresh linens.

  
Nodding permission to enter, Lenah smiles weakly,  "I suspect this week's pork roast may have gone over."  She steps back to sit on the bed, her face pale.  "Tell Alaris to bury it.  No dog should be as sick as I just was."

  
The bent old woman treads slowly yet confidently into the room.  " 'Tis the third morning in a row, is it not?" she queries, laying her burden on the dressing table.

  
Lenah tips her chin in the affirmative, not trusting herself to open her mouth for speech. Her chilled fingers find warmth inside the sleeves of her flannel gown.

  
"The meat is fine," asserts the matron, after a cursory glance at the contents of the bowl.

  
"It is not," protests Lenah crossly.  "Why else would I be ill every morning after eating it the night before?"

  
The older woman ignores the question in favor of asking one of her own.  "When was the last time you bled, milady?"  Her wide blue eyes watch her mistress carefully.

  
Lenah drops her gaze, forearms guarding her stomach, as her brain traces back.  Their wedding day, the lazy journey to the Vale, the stop in Saltpans for supplies, the slow ascent of the mountain.  It had been tedious, days-long work to unload all the goods, even with the sparse  staff of temporary porters they'd taken on in the harbor town.  Half the haul still needed to be sorted, yet that endeavor would have to wait.  Shortly after their arrival, Bronn had left with a small cadre of men to reclaim the ore lines from marauding Hill Tribes.  Time had passed, it was true.  _Too much time_ , she suddenly realizes.

   
Slowly Lenah's dark head comes up.  "What do you know of these things, Delores?"

  
The grey-haired one draws closer, her face kindly.  "This old body has birthed half a dozen babes."  She holds out gnarled fingers, still steady and strong.  "These old hands have helped to birth dozens more."  A note of quiet pride creeps into her voice, as she drops her arms to her sides.  "My mother, her mother, my great nan before her -- all had the gift."

  
This is welcome news indeed to the woman still reeling at the reality of being with child.  "Then why is not midwifing your chosen lot?"

  
"A lady needs aid birthing a baby once every nine moons at best," Delores answers with a small, indulgent smile.  "She needs help braiding her hair every day."

  
Compressing her lips as the queasiness rises once again, Lenah barely manages to blurt out, "I don't need my hair braided."

  
"As you say, milady."  Delores steps aside quickly to make way for Lenah's sudden dash to the bowl.  "A bit o' that pork is exactly what you need," she counsels, holding aside her lady's long locks while an already empty stomach tries to evacuate its contents. 

  
" 'Twill feed you both."

 

  
*********************

 

  
THUNK!  The sweep of a deceptively strong forearm sends a pair of dusty boots to the floor.

  
"No feet on the table," Delores scolds the big man -- the one who has just sauntered into her kitchen and taken a careless seat opposite.  He chuckles and sits up straight, planting his burly biceps instead.  It is a new but already familiar game between them.

  
"What are you making me?" Alaris asks interestedly, as he watches Delores fill a small plate with a slice of cold pork, a chunk of cheese, and a hunk of brown bread.  Since taking up residence at Copper Keep, he has found both the food and the banter to be to his liking.

  
Pausing to spare a weary glance, Delores informs him, " 'Tis not for you, 'tis for the lady."  She feigns annoyance with him on most days, yet in truth she rather enjoys his teasing.  Though not the most comely of men, Alaris is built like a bull, still fit in his later years, with thick white hair tied at the neck. Half of one ear is gone, yet his hearing is hardly ever affected, except when he wants to ignore her.

  
"Would you have a man starve to death?" he grumbles good-naturedly, pulling a knife from his belt and carving off a crescent of dry-aged cheddar.  The crumbs catch in the ends of his magnificent drooping moustache as he chews.

  
Delores snorts, none too delicately.  "It will be spring again before a man your size starves to death."  Nevertheless, she casually pushes the cutting board with roast a bit closer to him.

  
Somewhere out of sight in the labyrinthine keep, a door slams.  The sound of running feet reaches their ears five seconds before a young boy wheels around the corner. 

 

"Nan!  Nan!"  his ten-year-old lungs call out.  Brown hair tousled, cheeks flushed, he props his thin arms on his knees and doubles over to catch his breath. 

  
Delores hurries to his side in alarm.  "What is it, Dylan?" she prompts her grandson, her brow knit.  The boy is incorrigible and overly energetic, but not normally excitable over nothing.  "Where have you been half the morning?"

  
"Building a rock fort...on the ridge," the lad admits sheepishly.  Slipping outside the castle walls is one of his specialties, despite the fact he is forbidden to do to.  "I saw Ser Bronn!" he adds quickly, to allay further attention to his rambling exploits.

  
Sheathing his short blade, Alaris stands, nearly knocking over the chair with his bulk, not his haste.  "Are you sure, lad?"

  
"Aye," Dylan nods, as his grandmother hands him a dipper of water from a bucket.   Delores shrugs in the big man's direction.  "He has the eyes of youth."

  
Wiping his mouth with a sleeve, the boy meets his elder's gaze with certainty.  "I could see his blue cloak from miles away.  They've just come through the gap into the valley."

  
"Then my duties as castellan call me."  Eyeing the slab of meat he'd been about to devour, Alaris tips his head to Delores regretfully and ruffles Dylan's hair on his way out. 

  
The clumsy creak of wood-on-wood runners sounds, as Delores opens a drawer in the chopping block to extract a napkin.  Tenting the cotton over the porcelain plate, Delores hands  the meager meal to the boy, while admonishing him, "Go tell the mistress your news, and give her this."

  
"Where is she?" Dylan asks the obvious question before taking too many steps.

  
Busy clearing away the food, his nan does not bother to look up when she answers.  "In her bedchamber."  She spears the haunch of pork with a two-tined fork and drops it into a bowl, covering it with another plate.

   
"I'll be up directly to prepare her bath.  Tell her that as well."

 

 


	2. CHAPTER TWO

Seven men round the last curve in the road, their boots and pant-hems still sodden from the fording some three hours behind them.  The party had made camp overnight on the wrong side of the river -- wrong to the mind of their leader.  Bronn had wanted to press on to the castle, but the better part of wisdom had dictated they wait until daylight to cross the treacherous, boulder-strewn watercourse.  After picking their way down beside a tumultuous falls, they had followed the thundering cascade deep into the valley, then veered upslope to the castle guarding its approaches.

  
Shielding his face from the rising wind, Bronn looks past his palm to the massive walls and many-faceted fortress that flies his sigil.  _Never thought I'd live in a place this grand,_ he admits to himself.  Copper Keep -- nestled on the south-facing shoulders of the Mountains of the Moon, last to feel Winter's bite, first to feel the kiss of Spring.  With its grey sandstone towers domed in the metal that gave it its name, the southern-most stronghold in the Vale is visible from a long way off, like a beckoning mirage to a man returning.

   
It had been a necessary nuisance to leave the comforts of his new home so soon after taking possession of the place.  As long as the abandoned mines remained idle, no revenue would fill his coffers.  In the past, the ore lines had been vulnerable to attack by the opportunistic mountain clans that forever vex the lands allied with House Arryn.  By making his presence known with a show of force, Bronn had diffused much of that threat, due in no small part to the the alliances and respect he still has amongst the Hill tribes -- a lingering benefit from the early days of his travels with the Imp.  By re-populating the mining camps with the foremen and crew he hired off the docks, he leaves behind renewed production of the metal so badly needed across the Seven Kingdoms.  Now he returns with half a dozen hard men, the most seasoned fighters of the lot, to garrison the keep.

Digging his heels, the Lord of Copper Keep spurs his horse the last lengths across the empty moat and under the portcullis, followed by the other riders.  The thunder of hooves on the drawbridge and the cloud of dust they raise in the courtyard announce his homecoming. 

Arm raised in salutation, a hulking white-haired figure is the first to greet the company.  Alaris -- some rumoured him to be the disgraced second son of a middling house in the Riverlands, reduced to the mercenary life after banishment from his birthright.  Others held he was the bastard son of the most famous pirate ever to sail out of Lys.  None of the gossip mattered to Bronn, and in fact he knew the truth.  Alaris was the finest sword after himself he had ever known, and the one man he would entrust with his holdings -- precious and less so -- in his absence.  The big man steps forward, holding the equine's head while Bronn swings to the ground.

  
"Alaris."

  
"Bronn."

  
There are no vaulted titles between these two, only a nod and the few words needed between old friends. 

"All is well?"  Bronn stretches his spine and rolls his shoulders, feeling the stiffness of too many days on horseback.

  
"Aye," his castellan confirms.  "We had advance word of your approach."  Bronn raises an eyebrow in curiosity as he pulls off his gloves.  "The boy spied you from the ridgetop."

  
The sellsword smiles to himself at that news.  _Then Lenah should be ready for me,_ he muses wickedly.  Raucous laughter erupts behind him, as though in echo of his thoughts.  He turns to find the new recruits milling around uncertainly, trading ribald ripostes.

   
"Right," he raises his voice.  "You boys will quarter in the huts around the perimeter.  Draw lots, dice it out, fight it out -- I don't care how you sort who sleeps where."  His eyes idly travel the exterior walls and the castle facade as he speaks, sliding past then riveting back to an upper window.  _Was that movement?_

 _  
_ "You'll need to fend for yourselves for eats tonight," he continues, only half-concentrating despite the chorus of groans.  "Meal service starts..."  He stops mid-sentence, certain now that it is Lenah he sees in the archway.  She gazes down at him for several long moments, then slowly turns her back and drops her gown, walking naked out of sight.

  
Suddenly Bronn feels the beginning of a stiffness of a different sort.  A few of the men guffaw, all of them having followed his line of sight.  Alaris claps him on the shoulder with a grin.

  
"Welcome home."

 

  
*********************

 

  
The clang of a swordbelt meeting the tile floor of the vast entryway, followed by the stomp of determined boots resounding in the hollow space, bring Delores and her grandson running.

"Milord."  The servant woman hastily wipes her hands on her apron whilst giving a small bow, then hastens to rescue a traveling cloak on its way to the ceramic squares at her feet.

  
"OUT!" thunders Bronn without breaking his stride.  Too impatient to undo more than half the fastenings, he yanks his leather jerkin over his head, dropping it in his wake.  Flinching, frozen in uncertainty, Delores stands her ground, though failing to hold back the boy.

  
"Ser Bronn!"  Dylan dashes forward, unable to contain himself, his narrow chest swelling in pride.  "I saw you first!" he calls to a now-naked back, as a woolen shirt joins the trail of clothing.

  
Foot poised over a stair, the sellsword turns to the child.  "You have the eyes of a hawk, lad.  I'll toast them later."  His voice is not unkind.  "Now go with your Nan," he says, fixing the old woman with a pointed look.  _Unless you want the youngster to get an early education._ He is halfway up the first flight before they are out the doorway.

  
The mobile disrobing continues.  One boot is shed at the turning; the other comes to rest on the next landing.  Costly gloves leave his waistband to be tossed carelessly over the balustrade.  Sweaty socks litter the remaining risers to the tower chamber.  With a rough slap at the door lever, Bronn bursts through the portal in naught but his breeches, and steps into a dream.

  
_Just the way I imagined_ , he breathes silently.  Lonely nights on the road, long days in the saddle -- this was the vision in his mind:  Lenah waiting for him in their massive bed, propped lazily against the wooden frame by a mountain of pillows, covered only by a sheet.

  
Her green gaze holds his, her lips pursing in a tease, parting in a taunt.  "What took you so long?" she says quietly, as she slides the thin cotton covering off her shoulders and past her arched knees, letting her feet finish the unveiling.

  
Slowly, hungrily, his blue eyes devour her body.  _There's nothing will take long about this,_ he admits in wry humour to himself.  Then, wordlessly, he is at her side with her arms encircling him.  As gently as his raging lust will allow, he lays her flat, parallel to the headboard, his hands entwined in her hair, his teeth enticing her mouth, his legs entangling with hers.

  
"Are you wet for me, wench?" he growls hopefully into her ear, reaching between them for her sweetness.

  
"Oh yes," whispers Lenah as his fingers find her, either an answer to his question or a comment on his sliding touch.  With his mouth full of one deliciously responsive nipple, Bronn can only grunt.  Grabbing him by the hair, she moves him to the other side, moaning softly.  With another grunt, he moves between her legs, as they both fumble with his laces.  He is beyond caring about her pleasure now, intent only on his own.  Yet in the back of his mind, past experience reminds him he has reason to expect she is as aroused as he.

  
Lenah takes him eagerly in hand as he shoves his breeches off his hips.  "Hurry!" she urges him, her throat tight -- as tight has her slick channel when finally he plunges in.  Pushing one limber knee back nearly to her ear, Bronn fills her until she breathes out his name.  Rising and falling, writhing and groaning, their passion is intense and quick to peak.  Rapid, ragged gasps rip from Lenah's lungs in her throws, overlaid by Bronn's guttural rhythms to his final thrusts.

   
In the aftermath, the pair stroke each other's heads, neither of them yet opening their eyes.  Eventually, Bronn disengages to complete the shedding of his garb, then lies back with an eloquent exhalation.

   
"Sweet Maiden's Thighs!  A month is too long," he avows softly -- a whispered truth escaping from inside his head.

  
From the other side of the mattress, a careful silence screams.  Lenah bites her lip, not certain she is hearing him aright.  From her spot on her back, she keeps her eyes on the ceiling.  After a moment, she asks sweetly, casually, "Poor sellsword -- were all the whores at base camp poxy?"

  
Wincing inwardly, knowing he has dropped his guard, Bronn answers with sharp impatience.  "I wouldn't know.  Ask the other men."  _She likely will,_ he realizes belatedly.

   
"The other men matter not to me," remarks Lenah to the rafters.

  
"You know whose bed I've been in every night since I met you," Bronn retorts, rolling his eyes, though whether this is at the uncomfortable conversation or his own surprising fidelity, he does not know.

  
Truly incredulous now, Lenah twists her head his way to observe, "If we’re casting back that far...you returned to King's Landing after my father threw you out."

  
"Aye.  And in a foul temper for it, too," Bronn recalls with vestigial anger tightening his jaw.  "Tyrion suggested a night at Chataya's to raise my spirits."

  
"You need not tell me anymore," Lenah interjects quietly. The preceding pun has escaped them both in the weight of the moment.

  
"I turned him down."  Bronn glances across the pillows in time to see Lenah send her eyebrows skyward.  "That was Tyrion's reaction, too," he adds wryly.

  
Sighing, Bronn rolls onto his side to meet her eyes.  "I'm not much of a man for promises," he ekes out gruffly.  His lady turns to face him, resting a hand lightly on his chiseled hip.  He adopts a cautionary tone.  "I won't guarantee I'll never be tempted by another woman.  I can't promise not to look."  A beat goes by.  "But so long as you never give me cause to seek comfort elsewhere, I will strive to be a proper husband to you."

  
_No reason not to,_ he defines and defends it mentally.  _Why pay for cheap back alley cider when I can come home to free champagne?_

 _  
_ Lenah regards him silently, knowing this allowance did not come easily, afraid to make him feel too ensnared by treating the moment with excessive seriousness.  She renders her thanks in the form of a lingering kiss.  Then she smiles mischievously.

  
"And I promise to _strive_ not to bed the smithy, the groundskeeper, and the groomsman whenever you're away."  It is a frivolous equivalency; there is no one in most of the castle positions at present.

  
"Ha!" barks Bronn with the beginnings of a grin.  "You have no idea the pimply young twats and homely half-wits I'll find to people this keep."  His eyes spark a challenge.

  
"Likewise, every housemaid I hire will be sixty if she's a day.  And toothless," supplies Lenah with a provocative eyebrow raise.

  
Savoring his tongue against the inside of his mouth, Bronn accuses her, "Sassy wench, aren't you?"  The palm of his hand lands on her lower cheek with a little more force than necessary.

  
"And you're a cheeky bastard," returns Lenah, pressing against him, melting into his caress.

  
Some moments later they part.  Twisting his torso to plant bare feet on the carpet, Bronn reaches for the bedside flagon and gratefully pours himself a goblet.  "I reckon we'll be needing a maester soon..." he plans aloud, half distracted by the fruity liquid filling his senses.  For weeks, there had been nothing but suspect spirits from dubious distilleries along the road.

  
"And a midwife sooner," Lenah offers coyly from her half-raised body angle.

  
Bronn chokes on his swallow, then spears her with his gaze; the barest of nods confirms it.  His goblet hits the floor with a thud and a bounce, as he misses the nightstand in his haste to free his hands.

   
Pulling a laughing Lenah back into his embrace, he plants a hearty kiss on her forehead.  "Truly?" he asks.  _So much for the Imp's cautions about fields and fertility.  My seed is strong,_ he congratulates himself.

  
"It seems so."  Lenah unconsciously places a hand on her belly, looking down, still more than a little unsettled.

   
Bronn's hand covers hers, as his mouth twists with smug satisfaction.  "Can't wait to meet the little bast..." -- his eyes flick back up to hers in sudden awareness -- "the little Lord."

  
With a snicker for the thought of the bastards he _has_ likely left along the way, Lenah leans in to brush her lips against his ear.

  
"Come, Proper Husband," she murmurs playfully, curling her fingers into his and pulling him off the bed with her.  "I want to give you a most improper bath." 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter Three

"Always did have my fantasies about you as a serving wench," Bronn confesses, embracing her back as he slips out of her.  _Fantasies just bested by reality._ With the household staff banished, the couple has had to fend for themselves in the kitchen since the previous midday, leading to some vigorous over-the-table breakfast antics.

  
Straightening her spine and her skirts, Lenah pivots to face him.  "We'll have to give Delores regular time off," she suggests archly as he tucks himself back inside his homespuns. 

 

He seems not to hear her as his eyes travel the four walls, coming to rest on the remnants of their hastily pushed aside morning meal.  "That makes three," he says with some satisfaction, popping a triangle of toast past his teeth.

  
"If you're keeping score, that's more than three," retorts Lenah languidly, the memory of the hours since his return still fresh in her mind and on her body.  With outstretched finger, she dips up a taste of peach preserves from a small, round pot.

   
"Three rooms."  A look of blank bewilderment meets his words, a bit at odds with the sensual sight of her lips closing around her sweet and sticky digit.

  
Chuckling deep in his chest, Bronn spans her waist with his large hands and boosts her bottom onto the table.  "I've set myself a goal," he drawls, his eyes dancing wickedly.  "I intend to fuck you in every room of this castle."  _Excellent use of all this space_.

  
Reaching out to toy with the open ties of his V-neck blouse, Lenah regards him in high amusement.  "Sounds like the adult version of a children's game."

   
Bronn snorts in appreciation of her wit.  _Come into my castle, indeed_.  When she mischievously starts to loop pretty little bows up his chest, he rolls his eyes and traps her wrists back to her lap.

  
"Tell me," she teases then, tilting her head in skepticism.  "Does your goal have a deadline?  This keep has 53 rooms."

Coating his own forefinger liberally with the fruity delight, Bronn assures her with a wink, "Shouldn't take more than a moonsturn."  His voice deepens as he offers her the tip.  "Best keep up your strength."

  
Slowly, eyes locked on his, Lenah sucks his length clean, sending a barrage of sensory stimuli into his brain.  Just as he is on the verge of suggesting they move to the larder, a deep voice of warning reaches their ears.

  
"Coming in!"

  
Without so much as a deferential greeting, Alaris barrels through the doorway, one big fist wrapped around something.  With a loudly audible snicker, he takes in the scene of the hastily cleared table and the couple, Bronn standing between Lenah's parted thighs.  Then he turns to his employer and tosses across a rolled parchment.

  
"A messenger at the gate, flying the twin banners of Arryn and Royce."

  
_That one does not show proper respect_ , thinks Lenah, watching the castellan as he pockets a pear from the fruit bowl.  Yet she knows from the things her sellsword has said, that the bond between the two goes back to their youth; she does not question it.  Instead, she questions the missive in Bronn's hands.  "What news?"

  
Stepping clear of the table, Bronn holds the furled edges apart to skim the document, a frown beginning in his forehead.  "A tourney.  At Runestone.  In a fortnight."  He finishes his summary by tossing the message dismissively to the floor, fixing Alaris with a sharp look.  "You didn't give our acceptance..."

  
The other man shakes his head, while his eyes narrow in calculation.  "Though to my mind this delivery is meant more as a summons than an invitation."

  
Masking an eye roll, Bronn stoops to retrieve the paper and hands it to Alaris with an exaggerated nod.  "You have my leave to attend."  The castellan shrugs his disinterest and turns to depart.

  
"Muster a few of the men and meet me in the store ** _room_** ," Bronn instructs before he is away, emphasizing the last syllable ever-so-slightly.  "We have a mountain of supplies still to sort."  To Lenah, he gives a conspiratorial half-grin.  "The lady and I will want to inspect the progress later, after you’re finished."

"And tell Delores and Dylan they are welcome once again," calls Lenah after the burly man's back, while finding an answering smile for her husband.

   
Once they are alone, she hops to the floor with a query.  "Why not go?"

  
Rugged face pinched in derision, Bronn scoffs, "Bunch o' highborn twats in tin cans, riding around pokin' sticks at each other.  Why would I want to go to that?"

  
His pithy description steals a laugh from her throat, but Lenah continues, suggesting mildly, "It's not usually advisable to insult your liege lord..."

  
"The day I do Petyr Baelish's bidding is the day you can kill me." Bronn cuts her off with sardonic certainty, strutting back and forth with hands on hips.

  
Dropping her head, Lenah is briefly silent.  After a moment, a pensive tone overcomes her.  "I might like to attend a regalia before I am too heavy with child to travel."

  
This glimpse of reality causes Bronn pause.  He has not given much thought to what the next months will mean for his bride.  Relenting, he tries to see things in a new light.  "Might be good at that -- measure the so-called skills of the Vale Knights," he muses aloud, allowing the calculating fighter in him to have a say.  _Though if Ser Vardis was the best they have to offer, there won't be much to see._ "We'll go,” he says grudgingly."But I won't put my name on the lists."

  
Sliding closer, Lenah tips up her face, widening her eyes coquettishly.  "Not even to present me with the crown of flowers?"

  
Bronn wraps his arms around her, liking her easy assumption that he would be the victor.  "Who says I'd give it to you?" he teases, tongue in cheek.

  
Cupping him through the thin material of his breeches, Lenah murmurs, "He does."

  
Twitching a lazy eyebrow, Bronn smirks down at her.  "He's not wrong."

_  
************************_

 

Copper reflects gold, as the slanting rays of the setting sun catch the sheath of overlapping coins nailed to the enormous oak's trunk.  Beneath its spreading boughs, colourful tufted ducks dive and frolic in the village pond.  The people of Pennytree go about their afternoon business in the square that bears the settlement's namesake; very few spare a look for the tall blond stranger tossing bread to the ducklings.  She has been in their midst for a week and then some, asking after "a highborn maid of eight-and-ten, fair of face, with auburn hair."

  
Suddenly her feathered friends scatter, skittering on webbed feet across the liquid surface, complaining the whole while, until their wings overcome their heavy bodies.  Taking heed of the waterfowl warning, Brienne turns to find her husband riding up behind her, and a smile parts her sun-tanned face.  They've spent the better part of a fortnight in the Riverlands, the thinking being that Lady Sansa might have fled to her great-uncle at Riverrun.  While Jaime went to treat with the standoff at the seat of House Tully, Brienne had made inquiries in the surrounding countryside.

   
Dropping lightly from his saddle, Jaime dips in for a kiss, his flesh and blood hand finding her waist.  The press of his lips leaves Brienne momentarily speechless.  When she again finds her tongue, she asks without much hope, "Did you find her?"

  
Blond fringe shakes a negative, as Jaime turns to remove his horse's bit.  "I've been inside the fortress.  The Stark girl is not there."

  
"And no whisper of her among the smallfolk," sighs Brienne in frustration, taking the arm with the golden appendage when he offers.  "Nor of the fool who aided her escape."

  
The two stroll slowly towards the livery, lost in thought, Jaime's weariness weighing down his normally nimble mind. 

  
"Where could she be?" he asks the ground, as though the rich brown dirt might give up the tale of who had trod its pathways.

  
"She has a brother at the Wall," speculates Brienne uncertainly, though it seems unlikely a genteel noblewoman would attempt such an arduous journey alone, without a true knight to protect her.  It is immediately apparent that Jaime agrees.

  
"Too far."  He shakes his head decisively.  "She has an aunt in the Vale.  Much closer."

  
In a rush, Brienne recalls the news she has heard among the tavern crowd of late.  "They say Lysa Arryn fell to her death two weeks ago."

Jaime starts at that, perturbed that no one at Riverrun had seen fit to tell him.  Then again, he had not gone there as an ally.  "Leaving Sansa in the hands of Littlefinger.  If she's there," he concludes uneasily.  It would seem their next destination is laid out for them.

  
He feels the steps of his lady warrior slow, as she disengages to walk sideways, matching his pace.  Always the cautious pessimist, Brienne feels bound to point out some truths.

  
"The approach to the Mountains of the Moon is not easy.  The Eyrie is impregnable and the road to the Bloody Gate is heavily guarded."  Her fingers close around the hilt of her new sword, as she imagines fighting their way to the lady.

  
"True," agrees her husband, but now he is grinning.  "Fortunately, we have friends guarding the back door, so to speak."  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the purposes of this narrative, Sansa Stark is more of the age she is in the series. In the books, after Littlefinger descended from the Eyrie with Sweetrobin, and Sansa posing as his long lost niece Alayne, they do travel to Runestone, where a small melee tourney is held. I have greatly expanded that festival event for this tale.


	4. CHAPTER FOUR

A ringing roar goes up from the crowd, as two knights go down at once in a clash of steel.  The man who felled them both with a roundhouse of his warhammer quickly leaps to straddle first one, then the other, flipping back their visors to indicate their end in the games.  Tossing the shortsword of one of the vanquished to the partner watching his back, he gives a war cry and they both rejoin the fray.  Nearby other men fight, always in teams of two, a melee in close quarters.  The chaos is complete, the grit and mud and blood tangible.  All are on foot, and though the weapons are blunted, there is genuine danger, especially to the pair who wear no armour.  Bronn has grumpily agreed to carry at least a shield, though Lenah suspects his reason has less to do with defense and more to do with flaunting his new sigil.

  
Huddling in her cloak against the chill breeze off the bay, Lenah tensely watches the free-for-all on the field.  The spectators lining the grand risers are a raucous bunch, not all nobles, as the melee is open to any who wish to test themselves in hand-to-hand combat.  Shouts erupt, as Alaris grapples with a chainmail-clad brute near his size, both men falling to the mud caked ground.  The armoured opponent's weight advantage briefly threatens to prevail until Alaris' brother-in-arms joins in, and together the two subdue and unmask the man bearing the Corbray colours.

  
Not normally demonstrative in a vocal way outside the bedchamber, Lenah nevertheless finds herself standing and screaming her support.  Bronn's eyes dart upwards instinctively to find her, the move nearly costing him a kidney.  But Alaris steps in, blocking the blow aimed at Bronn's back.  _Gods be good!_ Catching her breath in alarm, Lenah sits down hurriedly, vowing to keep her silence until the end of this bloodsport.

  
The games continue, ebbing and flowing, accompanied by an undulating wave of cheers and jeers.  Elsewhere, Lenah knows, a more decorous assemblage attends the formal joust.  There the Lord Protector and his charge, the heir to House Arryn and the Vale, will no doubt make their appearance; the rough and tumble of the melee pit is beneath them.  She and Bronn have yet to cross paths with Lord Baelish or anyone in his party.  Her time has been spent here, and in truth, three days of sitting on a hard bench watching Bronn and Alaris best lesser men in a staged brawl has proven to be two and a half days too many.  _At least there is tonight's banquet_ , she reminds herself.

  
While Lenah begins to become aware of her nervous need to make water, Bronn and Alaris despatch several more opponents with little difficulty.  Unlike the other duos on the battleground -- relative strangers hastily paired solely for the tourney -- these two have been crossing swords for sport, and fighting side by side, at different times over nearly four decades.  Experience wins out, and suddenly there are only six fighters remaining.

With deceptive precision, Alaris arcs his longaxe obliquely upwards from ground level, knocking the helm from a foe.  His return angle catches another knight behind the kneecap, bringing him screaming to the dirt.

   
Meanwhile, Bronn ducks a clumsy knife slash, coming in close to wrap the chain of his morningstar around the neck of the single remaining Royce bannerman until he cries for quarter.  Lastly, the sole knight of the Blackwater faces the current pride of House Egen, a lad driven to avenge his father, Ser Vardis.  Shoulders heaving, the young man charges at Bronn in a rage, his longaxe bouncing off a shield suddenly become essential.  With calculated quickness, Bronn uses the pointed edge of his protective chevron to drive the air from his opponent's throat.  The youth drops his weapon and Bronn wrestles him by the neck to a prone position, employing the dirk from his boot to ensure the compliance of the defeated.

  
Voicing deep throated shouts, the victors now raise their fists and face the cheering, stomping crowd.  There is no wreath of victory here, no crown of flowers to gently woo the woman of one's dreams.  Only the battle lust of the throng and the equally lustful promise in the smile of one woman for her sellsword.

  
_I know what you want after a fight_ , thinks Lenah.  _I know very well..._

_  
*********************_

_  
_ "In the name of my father and my House, I challenge you to stand forth!"

  
The voice is loud, meant to be heard over the flapping of the banners that fly from the four corners of the tent -- two toned silken pennants depicting the drawn bow of the first and only knight of the Blackwater.  About to step from the hard packed path to the laid planks that keep the mud from his door, the knight and his lady break off their murmured conversation.

  
"Oh for fuck's sake."  Wearily, warily, Bronn turns to find the youngest knight of House Egen standing with legs braced wide and both hands on his sword hilt.  The sting of a defeat less than an hour old still reddens his narrow face.

  
"Leave it, boy.  I've bested you once already today," the sellsword warns, pushing Lenah with one hand in the direction of the canvas entry flap.   The other hand crosses his body to curl around the grip of his blade.

His challenger relaxes a bit into the smug smile of entitled youth.

  
"This time you don't have your big white-haired lackey to hide behind.  I think I can take down one old man."  His eyes flicker to Lenah and his smile broadens.  "Then maybe I'll remind his lady what it feels like to have some young cock."

  
Wrath rises in Bronn's soul and settles into the hard angles of his face.  "I'll gut you from beard to balls if you so much as think about it," he promises quietly.

  
His words are answered by the song of steel leaving its sheath.  "I **am** thinking about it," young Egen taunts, stepping forward with his edge slicing the air. 

  
The attack is met overhead by the implacable strength of Bronn's countermove, followed by a twisting parry and sidestep that leads the Vale knight to stumble forward with his own momentum.  He recovers quickly, however, taking a stab at Bronn's midsection that the older man must dodge.  A boot catches on the edge of the boardwalk, and the sellsword nearly goes down.  The younger man presses the momentary advantage, raising his blade for a downwards arc.  But Bronn's nimble footwork keeps him from falling, and he ducks inside to slash an exposed calf.  Fresh blood begins to mingle with the blue, white, and yellow of House Egen.

   
Taking a step back but never lowering his guard, Bronn offers, "Yield, boy, and live to die another day."

  
"Never!" the youth groans through gritted teeth.  Righteous in his rage for familial revenge, armoured in the invincible veneer of arrogance, he comes at Bronn with renewed fervor but lessened accuracy. The two trade ringing blows as they move across the ground, with Bronn eventually driving the injured man around the side of the tent.  Suddenly the reckless challenger finds himself entangled in the heavy guy ropes that anchor the canvas walls against the wind.

  
With a cluck of the tongue, Bronn mutters, "Damnfool," and makes good his promise, slicing high to low.  A sharp gasp behind him brings his head around to see Lenah, looking both relieved and sickened at the same time.

  
"You should have gone inside," he admonishes her, as he paints crimson trails on the course tent material to clean his steel.

  
"He was so young," remarks Lenah, her face pinched in shock.

  
Sliding his blade back against his hip, the sellsword remarks dismissively, “One that stupid wasn't like to live to old age."  _Did him a favor.  Now he can be a hero to his family._

When his lady says nothing, Bronn grows a little impatient with her brooding.  "You've seen me kill a man before, Lenah.  One you must have wanted dead.  What do you think I am?"  His flashing eyes challenge her.  "Who do you think you married?"

  
Nodding her head slowly, Lenah accepts the reminder, then comes to take his arm, drawing him away from the still suspended corpse.

  
"I think I married a very capable man," she assures him, the pride in her voice genuine.  Her chin and eyes twitch vaguely in the direction over their shoulders.  "However, I would rather not look at _that_ for the next days.”

  
Hiding a chuckle, Bronn deposits her at the entrance to their outdoor chambers.  "I'll see to it."  At that moment, two servant lads appear on the path, each trailing a wheelbarrow -- the daily refuse collection for the encamped visitors.

  
"You there!"  Bronn calls out to them.  They pull to a stop obediently, awaiting instruction with bored faces.  "Do either of you know the sigil for House Egen?"

  
One of the boys nods, interest alighting in his features.  "I' seen their camp."

  
"Good," says Bronn brusquely, tossing them a couple of coins.  "I have something for you to deliver there."

 

*******************

  
Dropping the canvas curtain behind him for privacy, Bronn enters their home away from home, already unstrapping his swordbelt.  At the sound of the rustling flap, Lenah glances up, her green eyes grave.  Without a word, Bronn wriggles his eyebrows knowingly at her, then pulls off his muddy boots and sweaty socks, tossing them carelessly beside the entry.  His toes sink gratefully into the layer of pelts and colourful rugs that comprise the floor, as he pads over to prop his weapons against the central support post.

 

The space inside the square walls is cozy, all furs and tapestry and wood, lit softly by shoulder- tall candelabra standing guard at the four compass points.  An onion-domed brazier of brass gives off a smoky warmth from the corner, its overnight feast of firewood already stacked nearby.  At the foot of the simple, woodframe bed, an oaken trunk rests with its lid open, a jumble of Lenah’s gowns and occasionally-worn smallclothes inside.  Bronn peels out of his leather jerkin and hooks it by a shoulder off the heavy hasp.

 

From her spot perched on the mattress, Lenah is oddly silent, even when her husband bends to pull aside her fall of hair and leave a trail of well-placed kisses along her sensitive neck.  When met with only a lackluster response, Bronn straightens and moves to the nearby tray table, set with service for the addictive fermented apple libation of the Royce orchards.

 

“So now House Egen has no more heirs.  What of it?”  he says in frustration, turning to the carafe to meet his other need.  “You can be damn sure I won’t raise _my_ son to be such a twat!”  He sits beside her on the pile of cushions and rushes that serves as bedding, nursing his wine and his annoyance.

 

Annoyance flickers in Lenah’s heart as well, at herself more than anything.  She has no bedrock answer for why she has been so unsettled by what she has just witnessed.  Her emotions are increasing, and increasingly not her own; she faults the state of her womb.  _One more reason I will not enjoy this pregnancy._ She reaches for Bronn’s pewter and throws back a hearty swallow to calm her nerves.

 

“So you will nurture a brave boy, made of shrewdness and battle steel – like his father?”

 

Bronn smiles in grim delight at the picture.  _I can think of worse ways to spend my waning years,_ he ponders, thinking of all the aging sellswords he’s seen making fools of themselves to earn their coin in demeaning staged contests.

 

“And what if it’s a daughter?”  Lenah tilts her body sideways, laying her head against his upper arm, an overture of tenderness.  Bronn sets aside his drink to draw her closer, watching his long fingers, still grimy from grasping a sword, splay protectively across Lenah’s tightening belly.

 

“Might be she’d turn out like Brienne,” he says with a slight shrug, revealing his fond hope for a warrior girlchild, as well as his hidden admiration for the sword mistress of Tarth.  He looks up quickly.  “But with her mother’s looks,” he adds, lest he might have given offense.

 

Narrowing her eyes at his tacit allowance for the cruelties directed over the years at their friend, Lenah thinks, _I am not fooled.  You would fuck her in a clockmaker’s minute._

 

“If we had a daughter the likes of Brienne, you would one day find yourself overmatched,” Lenah observes dryly.  Bronn rewards her challenge with a deadpan look and a dig of the fingers to her ribcage, his eyes on the swell of her bosom when she flinches. 

 

Spirits now raised by their banter, Lenah smiles up at him with a tease on her lips.  “Men – always so bold with their swords and their bravado.  There is much to be said for subtlety and soft cunning.”

 

Bronn’s patience is growing as short as his cock is growing long.  “Right now I’d like to bury my sword in your soft cunny,” he growls in roguish disregard for polite conversation, laying her back against the pillows.  This time Lenah does not twist away.

“You’re such a romantic, Bronn,” she murmurs sarcastically in the second before his mouth claims hers.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite the fact that Show Cersei seems to know enough not to drink during pregnancy, I truly doubt that this knowledge was widespread in Westerosi society. We didn't even know this in our world until the latter half of the 20th century. So please don't judge my OC -- LOL!


	5. CHAPTER FIVE

“What are you doing?”

Slowing his steed to a walk, Jaime looks back over his shoulder in curiosity.  He’s been hearing the faint scrape of steel against scabbard at irregular intervals for the past half mile.

“Admiring my gift,” admits Brienne after a moment, when she pulls abreast.  Unsheathing a short length of the blade at her side, she smiles in quiet delight.  The black and red ripples of folded Valyrian metalwork are almost mesmerizing.  In her large hand, the grip, with its ruby-eyed lionshead pommel, is a perfect fit.

“Oathkeeper,” she breathes almost reverently.  The warrior of Tarth has yet to draw it for anything other than aesthetic appreciation.  “I refuse to have its first use be to spear fish from the Red Fork for our dinner,” she tells her husband, setting her jaw in that stubborn way that so infuriates him and undoes him at the same time.

They have followed the River Road east for days, enjoying the hospitality of way houses when possible, sleeping out when necessary.  Ser Jaime’s off-handed sword fishing skills have left much to be desired, even in the sluggish loops of the wide watercourse, and the last inn is now two days behind them.

“I’ll set a snare,” promises Jaime, making it sound easier than he knows it to be.  The likelihood of a random rabbit or other riverside dweller setting foot in a ground noose is slim – unless there is a beaver lodge nearby. 

So engrossed are they in conversation, they almost pass by the sign – Overnight Lodgers Welcome.  The arrow beneath the neatly lettered words points up a crooked dirt path, to a tidy-looking farmhouse with a friendly plume of smoke rising from the tumblestone chimney.

Jaime turns to his bride with a wide and somewhat relieved grin.  “Snares and sword fishing will wait for another day.”

Brienne says nothing, but her lips curl upwards, silently acknowledging his stroke of good fortune, as they head their horses up the narrow track.

A bony woman with course brown hair escaping a checkered cap steps onto the porch to greet their arrival, using her matching apron to shoo the gaggle of geese that come waddling up on hopeful legs.

“G’day, Ser…” – she greets Jaime, pausing for a moment to study Brienne before continuing – “…Lady.”

“Good day, Grandmother,” returns Brienne brusquely, though upon second look, the farmwife is not as old as she appears.  While her face is lined, her back is straight, her neck and hands stretched but unwrinkled.

“How may I serve?” the woman asks, noting the trappings of nobility about her visitors.

“We seek news of a maid who may have passed this way.”  Brienne has some hope – this unthreatening homestead would appeal to a girl on the run.

“And a room for the night,” interjects Jaime, quick to prioritize his comfort.

Glancing up at the tall knight on his fine horse, the farm woman assures him, “The room is yours.”  She pauses slyly.  “Though there’s just the one.”

“One will be sufficient,” responds Jaime in curt amusement, as he dismounts.  Brienne follows suit, slightly annoyed with her husband for interrupting her inquiry.  But their hostess has not forgotten.

“What of this lass?”

Brienne steps closer, her voice gentle.  “A highborn maid of eight-and-ten, fair of face, with auburn hair.”  She has repeated it so many times in the past weeks, the words come by rote.  “She may not be travelling alone.”

The farmwife shakes her head.  “No maidens here, highborn or otherwise.”  Casting a weather eye to the horizon, she announces, “Supper is at sundown, when my man returns from the fields.  The well and stable are behind the house.”

Brienne inclines her head, then, sliding a glance at her partner, she opens her mouth.  “I am Brie –“ she begins, only to be interrupted. 

“We want no names,” insists the woman.  “We take no part in the wars of your lot.”

Her gaze spares only the barest flicker of curiosity towards Jaime’s ornate hand.

 

*******************

 

The promised meal proves to be a banquet compared to campfire carp or spitted rabbit, and Jaime and Brienne feast gratefully.  A savory egg and goose liver pie, a hearty vegetable soup, and freshly baked plum tarts – the entire repast washed down with spiced cider and enlivened by the homespun wit of the farmer, a cheerful, broad-backed man missing the last two fingers of his left hand. 

When the hearthfire burns low and the cider runs out, the couple is shown to a low-ceilinged loft room under the apex of the roof.  In the trapped heat of the second story, the goose down coverlet is nearly not necessary, but the pin feather mattress is soft and thick.  Jaime luxuriates for long moments, thankful for some padding beneath his shoulder blades.  Then he turns his attention to his bride, nuzzling her long neck, caressing her ribs, trying to tease her into a kiss – only to find Brienne pre-occupied, her gaze neither near nor far.

“A copper,” he says wearily, not really in the mood for talk.

“Look around us, Kingslayer,” suggests Brienne in earnest quietude. 

In the soft yellow lamplight, Jaime casts his eyes over the wooden crossbeams above them.

“What?  Is there a spider in the rafters you want me to kill?”  His teasing tone earns him a withering glance.

“These people,” muses Brienne.  “They have so little -- this house, this farm – yet they seem free.  And happy.”  The simple, idyllic existence of their hosts has stirred a yearning in her for something she and Jaime will likely never have.

“They’ll be happy enough, until winter comes,” Jaime retorts flippantly, though he is troubled by her barely spelled out sentiment.

He sighs, pulling Brienne to him.  “For now, all we can do is live each day.”  A course finger strokes the pulse at her throat, a palm fans out to cup her face.  “Beyond that, I have no answers.”  He feels his ladywife’s taut frame soften in his embrace, spurred by a kiss.

After a moment, he offers a half-serious, half-smiling version of the future.  “Mayhaps one day, I will be free to bring you openly to Casterly Rock.  You can plant a garden if you like.”

“I would like that,” Brienne decides with a wistful upturn of the corners of her mouth.  Jaime watches her, waiting for a shift in her mood, hoping to nudge her into a more amorous frame of mind.

“And where would I come by the seed?” wonders Brienne expansively, looking past him with a frown.  Then her eyes snap back to his, a blush beginning below her lashes.  “For my ‘garden’…?”

Laughing aloud in delight, Jaime rolls atop her, grabbing an edge of the eiderdown.  “For _that_ , I have an answer,” he promises, using his good hand to cover them completely in a feathery cocoon.

In the intimate darkness, with the air close and scented with each other’s breath, they have only the senses of their skin and their ears to guide them.  The sensual slide of fingers, the probing press of lips, the soft sounds of rising pleasure – they surrender completely to the carnal.  Languidly, as though for the first time, they explore one another’s bodies, the experience heightened by the lack of sight.  Even when Jaime joins their eager loins, eliciting a breathless groan from Brienne, the pace continues unhurried at first.  Each time he grinds a circle with his pelvis, the lovers sink deep into the forgiving mattress.  In time, Brienne wraps her lean legs around his back, nails scraping his hips in her need.   Jaime knows the signal well, and suddenly what began slowly becomes a sweaty tangle of limbs and bedclothes, as Jaime’s powerful thrusts bring them rapidly to the finish. 

 


	6. CHAPTER SIX

Smug as a cat with a canary, Bronn strolls into the great festival pavilion, looking both left and right expectantly.  The farewell feast is well underway, with knights and nobles, ladies and lords, milling about and serving themselves from a vast buffet board that groans under the weight of its bounty.  Winter may be coming, but autumn in the vassal lands overseen by House Royce is a time of plenty.  The offerings at table include game from the canyons, fruits from the orchards, gourds from the garden, even trout from the waterways.

As Bronn sizes up the company and the culinary choices, several pairs of eyes turn his way, those of the men lingering overlong on the woman at his side.

_Aye, she’s a stunner_ , he agrees with them silently.  His bride wears the forest green gown well; the colour sparks the lustre in her dark locks, the draping neckline both hides and hints at her charms, and the split sleeves of snowy white give him the opportunity to slip a sly finger against skin to surprise her.  He does so now and feels Lenah start, then melt against his torso.  As he brushes his lips across her temple, his eyes alight with pride upon his token, the necklace nestled in her bosom, and he counts himself a fortunate man.

Yet a man he is, first and foremost, and there are many beautiful women at a soiree such as this.  Moving casually towards the head table, Bronn casts a practiced eye over the crowd, his gaze pausing here and there to appreciate a comely face, a feminine form.  Suddenly his mouth compresses to a thin line. 

“Bugger me.”

Rolling her eyes at his usage of her least favorite vulgarity, Lenah asks in curiosity, “What is it?”

Bronn’s steps have come to a halt.  “That’s Sansa Stark.”

“Where?”  Lenah tries to follow his line of sight.

“Near the dais.”  It takes a moment, but Lenah eventually sees the only young woman he can mean.

“Her hair?”

“She’s dyed it somehow,” Bronn declares with utter certainty.  Whether crowned with tresses of ebony or ginger, he could never mistake her porcelain beauty – the pursed lips of a child beneath the glacial eyes of a Northern queen. 

His mind races, as a sellsword’s cold avarice rises.  “Cersei Lannister would pay a sizable ransom for this knowledge,” he remarks, eyes narrowing.

Lenah turns on him, obstructing his view.  “You will not,” she says, somewhat appalled.  Her only answer is the peaking of an annoyed eyebrow.  She spends a long beat gazing into Bronn’s blue pools of insouciance, before telling him icily, “I will make certain you do not.”

With that, she shows him her back and heads straight for the top of the seating tier.

 

*****************

 

Standing stiff as a board, Alayne surveys the gathering with empty eyes, her mind far away on a forgotten time, a family lost.  The hum of voices around her barely pierces the bubble of her consciousness.  Inside the invisible shell she has raised around her, these people have no power.  She goes through the motions of society and civility, but it is all meaningless, a sham.  She can play the game without feeling a thing.

The crowd of nobles ebbs and flows around her, yet never touches her.       A short, dark-haired woman in green approaches her purposefully and, always kind and courteous, Alayne spares her a small smile.  Then the woman speaks.

“Lady Sansa.”

Real terror washes over Sansa’s face; other than that, her body language betrays nothing.  She looks about the merrily-striped canvas walls, noting first Lord Petyr in a bored listening pose with their host, Bronze Yohn Royce, whose luxurious mutton-chops are working mightily as he expounds some theory.  She darts her eyes past where young  Lord Robin sits chafing in the care of the unfortunate Maester Helliweg, averting her attention quickly lest the willful and spoiled boy take it into his head to make her evening equally miserable.  Then, down the crowded central carpet, she spies a familiar male figure whose fortunes look to have taken an upturn.  The man she knew as her Lannister husband’s hired sword gives her the barest of nods before sauntering over and taking the arm of the woman who has just spoken Sansa’s true name.

 

*****************

 

As he approaches to intercept Lenah’s conversation with the wolfgirl, Bronn’s gaze locks with the canvassing glance of  Littlefinger.  Following  Bronn’s visual trajectory, the Lord Protector’s eyes alight on the two women, then slide back to the sellsword.  Without apology, he abandons Lord Royce mid-sentence to arrive at Sansa’s elbow the same moment Bronn reaches Lenah’s.

“I heard the erstwhile Master of Coin had appointed a new Lord at Copper Keep,” begins Baelish in his smooth, deceptively soothing baritone.  “I did not realize it was his old bodyguard.”

_A lie_ , thinks Bronn.  There wasn’t much Littlefinger didn’t know.  He nods curtly in greeting.

“Lord Baelish.”

The air is tense between the two men, the moment balanced on a knife’s edge.  _He must know I recognize her_ , Bronn calculates.  _How much of a threat does that make me?_

With a faint, superior smile, Littefinger turns to Lenah, oozing all the false charm of a mongoose.  “I have not had the pleasure of meeting your bride, Ser Bronn.”

Extending her free hand to be clasped between his two, Lenah resolves a bold and hasty decision.

“I am Lenah Greystark, lately of Three Wolves.  Widow of Romeric Bolton,” she says pointedly.

_Damnfool woman!_ curses Bronn inwardly, tensing in real anger.  _She’s just raised the stakes._

“A marked name in some parts,” observes Baelish slyly, his eyes black pools of unknown peril.

“As is that of Sansa Stark,” Lenah reminds him, green eyes flashing in retort.

The object of their discussion looks from one to the other of the people around her, dismay and confusion on her pale face.  Bronn squeezes Lenah’s fingers a little more robustly than necessary, signaling his determination to give her a sorting out before the day is ended.

Long moments pass, with the Lord Protector and the lesser wolf girl sharing a frank face off.  Then Baelish seem to step away from the brink, turning to Bronn to remark. “I see we both have our secrets.”

It is a precarious balance, but Bronn is eager to put a name to the bargain.

“I’ll let you keep your  prize.  You’ll leave me with mine,” he suggests gruffly, his features set in stone.

Baelish only curves his lips enigmatically as he steps past them, with his secret trophy sending a worried look back over her shoulder.

 

******************

 

“That was folly, Lenah!”

Angry jaw set, Bronn steers his wife none too gently by the elbow into their tent.  Her risky and ill-considered gamble to diffuse the situation by offering up an impasse puts them both in more danger than she realizes.   

Lenah sighs wearily, as though it is he who does not understand.  “Now the skins are even,” she insists as she removes her cloak and gloves.  “And you won’t be betraying that poor girl for a purse of gold you don’t need.”  She eyes him with a challenge.

_She thinks she’s outmaneuvered me AND Littlefinger,_ he discerns in disgust. 

“You won’t beat Baelish at the game,” he tells her, his voice rising in exasperation.

Lenah tosses her head carelessly.  “I can try.”

“By putting yourself at risk??” Bronn nearly shouts.  Lenah turns away with a frown, but his big hand reaches out and spins her back to face him. 

“Do you have any idea how dangerous he is?”  He wants to shake her by the shoulders, wipe that misplaced surety off her face.

“What?” Lenah scoffs, her eyes snapping.  “Is Petyr Baelish going to murder us in our sleep?”  She tries to pull her arm free of his grasp, but his strong fingers hold her fast.

“Petry Baelish rarely does his own dirty work,” Bronn assures her grimly, his tone hard.  Only then does he release her, shoving her roughly away from him.  “But a knife in the night is a distinct possibility.”

He treats her to an implacable stare, before swiveling and throwing wide the canvas flap to storm out into the darkness, letting in a wave of cold as harsh as the set of his departing back.

Left standing in the chill air, Lenah steps to the brass brazier to warm herself, while replaying events in her head.  She’s never seen the sellsword this angry.  Can it be, she’s pushed him too far?  _He’s not the only one who’s angry_ , insists the stubborn muse between her ears.

Lost in thought, she twists her spine, trying to reach the stays of her gown, recalling all the times Bronn has made a sensual game of undoing her clothing.  She knows not where he’s gone off to – the arms of another woman?  He’ll be back, she assures herself, as she slips into a silken robe.

_You hope_ , the voice inside her head manages to taunt her, before she resolutely quashes it.

 

 

 


	7. CHAPTER SEVEN

The pine-scented tickle of smoke in her nostrils awakens her, and for a moment, Lenah is disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings  –  the vaulted canvas walls hung with stag hides for warmth,  the floor of pelts and rugs,  a smell like campfire in the air,  and the rough bed in which she finds herself…alone.

Then she remembers.

In spite of herself, Lenah has dozed off, and knows not how much time has passed.  The candles are only half spent, but the brazier is giving off more smudge than heat now.  Rolling up on one elbow, she eyes the brass bowl of dying coals resentfully, unwilling to leave the comfort of her warm place amongst the goose down and furs to stir the fire back to life.

From outside the tent a small troupe of crunching footsteps approaches, and despite her reckless, Others-may-care attitude earlier, a stab of fear jolts Lenah’s heart. _Not even a knife to hand_ , she chastises herself bitterly.  Bracing against the shock to her skin, she throws back the covers and swings her legs over the edge of the mattress, adjusting the twisted halves of her robe against the chill.  Her mind calculates the distance to the smouldering basin _.  If they don’t rush me, I might be able to strew fire at their feet and escape under the back wall._  

Out in the night, the advancing footfalls halt short of the cloth-covered threshold.

Lenah holds her breath.

She hears the sounds of a coin purse being rifled…and then a promise spoken in a familiar voice.

 

*************

 

“You’ll have the second half come morning.”

One by one Bronn flips four coins into four open palms, as he watches his words disappear in cold little puffs past the lightly falling snow.  The temperature has dropped considerably since sundown, along with the cloud deck, bringing the first intermittent dustings of winter’s powder.  Hastily, he pulls the drawstring and pockets his change bag, rubbing his hands together for warmth, wondering what type of cold reception he might meet on the other side of the tent flap.  Then, squaring his shoulders resolutely, he ducks through the canvas doorway, with a sparkling flutter of snowflakes following him.  He shakes the frozen droplets from his hair and clothing as he enters.

Almost immediately, his gaze locks on Lenah, now standing beside the bed in naught but a thin, unbelted gown.  Her eyes spark defiance, his flash stubborn anger.

 _Confounded wench **would** test my mettle with her nakedness, _ he fumes inwardly, refusing to gaze too long at her voluptuous curves.  In stiff-backed silence, Bronn yanks off everything he wears except his breeches and blouse, his movements jerky with pent-up emotion. 

Before he is quite finished, Lenah strides forward on measured steps, past the careless mound of brocade and leather he’s made… stopping inches from his chest, arresting him with her eyes, confronting him with her nearness.  Still wordless, she brings her lips to his, her warm breath tickling his cool chin --  a brush of tenderness that goes unanswered. 

Mouth set in a hard line, wary, unyielding, Bronn remains as motionless as a statue.  After a long moment locked in her gaze, another kiss lands, one which he returns this time, though he makes no move to embrace her.  Boldly, Lenah reaches up to caress his collar bone inside his half-buttoned shirt. 

 _Seems like an apology_ , his brain tells him -- or is it his cock talking, responding to the press of her breasts against his chest? 

Suddenly, Lenah grips the neckline of his shirt in her compact fists and rips the fabric down the center, sending buttons flying.

Shock, aggression, lust  --  all rise on a tidal wave within Bronn’s core.  Slowly, Lenah opens her gown and backs up to the mattress, never taking her eyes from his.  In three long-legged paces he is upon her, flipping her onto her spine, his residual anger evident in the way his body pins hers.  He encounters no resistance when he forces his thigh between her legs, only the inviting rise of her hips as she jackknifes a knee.  Rough hands encase her skull, trapping her mouth beneath his hunger.  The grinding of his pelvis is bruising to them both, the chafing of his rigidness inside his leathers, painful.  He drops his hands to his waist to free himself, grunting as his weight shifts entirely into his torso.  Lenah squirms, her teeth finding the flesh of his shoulder in reprisal; but it is _her_ fingers that finish pulling the supple calfskin down his buttocks, _her_ fingers that guide his cock to its mark.

Thrust after punishing thrust, they vent their fury until it becomes fire, their pride until it becomes passion.  Skin that once was pale and chill from winter’s bite and apathy’s bane, is soon flushed with desire.  And in the final exchange of pleasure and pain all ire is exorcised, leaving in its place a bond more sure for the testing.

Once their ragged breathing has stilled, Bronn rolls to the side, reaching for a corner of the coverlet to pull across their bodies.  He regards her for a moment, a smirk tugging the corners of this mouth.

“What am I going to do with you, woman?” he complains gruffly.  “You confound me like no other.”  His head moves back and forth helplessly.  “You’ll be the death of me yet.”

Snuggling into the space inside his bicep, Lenah blinks rapidly, quipping, “But what an epic way to go.”

“Aye, they’ll write a song about it,” he returns with wry humour.  “The Ballad of Ser Bronn – he died fucking.”  _Has a nice ring to it, truth be told,_ he thinks.

“Will you sing it for me?” teases Lenah, while he hitches his hips to adjust his breeches.

He shrugs, stating the obvious.  “I’ll be dead.”

A beat of silence follows, before sudden laughter engulfs them both, waves of shoulder-shaking mirth bringing tears of abandon, releasing the last vestiges of tension.  As the giggles die away, on the other side of the canvas is heard the scuffle of feet and a single, frost-induced cough.

Lenah perks on the sound, then winces in mild chagrin.  “Did you drag Alaris from whatever bed he’d found to guard yours?”

With a roll of the tongue and a droll wink, Bronn remarks dryly, “Alaris had his hands full.”

 _A fine pair they were, too._ The big man had been less than welcoming of the interruption when Bronn went searching for him in the pleasure tents.  The rest of their small travelling contingent was nowhere to be found inside the keep, likely decamped to the pubs and cheap brothels in the nearby town. 

“Then who…?” murmurs Lenah lazily. 

“Four squires in need of coin more than cunt,” says Bronn with a matter-of-fact tilt of the head. _Tough choice, lads_ , he commiserates silently.

Shifting onto his chest to meet his gaze, Lenah raises one hand with thumb tucked, ticking off the fingers, querulousness written in her face.

“One for each corner,” her husband elaborates, as though it were obvious.

Averting her eyes, Lenah says nothing for several moments, as the defining truth of their relationship comes home to rest in her heart.

“You have always been my protector, Just Bronn,” she admits solemnly, soothingly, while watching the path her finger trails between his pectorals.

  
“And you’ve always been the pain in my ass who makes that task harder,” he retorts succinctly, his mind likewise on their first days together.  _Harder in more ways than one._

Lenah glances up at him in time to see one raised eyebrow daring her to deny it.  She wisely chooses to press her lips to his instead.

“In keeping with that status, I would have you stoke the fire,” she suggests sweetly.

Bronn peers at her for a moment, not certain whose status she might be referring to --  protector or pain in the ass --  finally deciding she’s having a bit of both.  With an evil grin, he throws the covers from their bodies, eliciting a feminine shriek. 

Chuckling in satisfaction, Bronn rises and steps to the rack of woodstuffs.


	8. CHAPTER EIGHT

“Seven hells!”

Lenah awakens with a quiet curse on her lips, her breath visible in the cold air in front of her ice-tipped nose.  Bravely, she tries to ignore her queasy stomach and her urgent bladder, but it is a losing battle.

Eventually, her face pinched in grim resolve, she slides from the bed and scampers, shivering, to the corner chamber pot, claiming Bronn’s torn shirt from the floor as she travels for an extra layer of warmth.  Once relieved, she finds a few stale wafers beside the carafe to banish her morning sickness, and returns to bed feeling much improved.

Folding herself around her husband’s strong back, she embraces his body heat and his comforting presence, sighing contentedly.

A chill cheek against the nape of his neck jolts Bronn from slumber.  He rolls flat, pulling Lenah into the curve of his arm, planting an absent-minded kiss atop her dark head.

“It’s colder than a wight’s tit in here!” he exclaims in perturbation, twisting his head around to confirm with his eyes that the brazier is down to its last coals.

“Winter is…” begins Lenah in a prophetic tone.

“Don’t say it,” interrupts Bronn warningly.

Lenah frowns at him.  “Even though my forebears were banished from the North, my blood still knows the words and the ways.”

Bronn vents a curt guffaw, amused by her assertions of all that highborn nonsense.

“You sayin’ you’re cold blooded now?” he scoffs.  “I think not.”  _I **know** otherwise, _ his nail-raked lats remind him.

Lenah smiles slyly, batting her eyes in exaggerated helplessness.  “So who will light the fire?”  It is not an unimportant question to her mind -- this chore she has no intention of undertaking.

“Not me,” shrugs Bronn, holding up a hand to forestall the look of angry surprise six inches from his face.  “We have hired squires, remember?”

“Boy, get in here!” he bellows, thinking only to summon the one on duty at the door. 

But four lads pile en masse through the tent flap, falling against one another like dominoes.  At the sight of the lord and lady abed, two trade a juvenile smirk, one keeps his eyes on his boots, and one looks on in frank interest.

“You’re dismissed,” Bronn tells them with a wave of his hand, looking past the first in line to the other hirelings.  “I’ll have the second half of your payment at the breakfast board.”

While the three squires closest to the exit swivel on their heels to leave, Bronn motions to the boldest one.  “You.  Stay and get this fire going again.”

Bronn looks on with approval, to see the young man demonstrate he clearly knows his way around a firebox.  The youth first gathers some kindling close at hand, then uses iron tongs to lift aside the brazier’s fluted dome and stir the coals.

As the dry chunks begin to show a bit of red glow, Bronn queries conversationally, “How’d you fare in the squire’s challenge, then?”

“Not as well as you did in the melee, my lord,” comes the deferential reply, while small splints of wood and bark join the quickening embers.

Bronn grunts, smiling slightly, pleasantly surprised that his reputation has reached all the way down into the ranks of the knights-in-waiting.

“How famous you are,” whispers Lenah teasingly into his ear, tweaking a masculine nipple while their attendant’s attention is elsewhere.

Trapping her playful fingers in his large hand, Bronn continues the conversation.  “Where’re  you from, lad?”

“White Harbor.”  Smoke is rising now from the cauldron, and the young man squats to coax ignition with puffs of air from his lungs.

“White Harbor,” repeats Bronn with a wicked grin.  “My ladywife here has ties up that way.”

Beneath the weight of the covers, Lenah kicks him.  It has been many generations since the Greystarks were stripped of all lands, and their ancestral seat at the mouth of the White Knife given to another house.

“You a Manderly?”  Bronn names the current power in the Wolf’s Den, whilst scissoring Lenah’s legs between his to prevent another undercover assault.

A sharp snap signals the birth of a tiny orange flame, fanned and fed quickly by the squire as he replies, “House Long, my lord.”

After a quick finger test of the onion-shaped surface, the young man uses two hands to replace the now-cooled lid.  Turning to the bed, he notes with speculation the tension between the bodies of its occupants.

“Will there be anything else, Ser…Lady?”

Lenah shakes her head immediately, but Bronn pauses for thought.

“Any idea what time the Lord Protector and that Cunt-in-Training of his are leaving?” he wonders.  _Like to avoid the gate during that clusterfuck._

“Not anytime soon,” the youth answers easily, without blinking an eye at Bronn’s salty language.  “Word is, they’re planning to winter here at Runestone.”

Bronn considers this while Lenah, taken aback, queries in dismay, “How much fell last night?”

“Only a dusting, my lady.”

“But in the heights of the Eyrie…” Bronn adds, his thoughts on the wind-swept spires thousands of feet above the valley floor, and the howling cold that lurked there even in summer.  He shivers at the memory.

“We’d best get on the road ourselves.”

 

***********************

 

“We should be ahorse, you and I.”

Staring out the carriage window with an ill-tempered frown, Lenah voices for the tenth time her complaint of the past few miles.

Thus jarred from his pleasant doze, Bronn lifts his head and rolls his eyes, beyond tired of her nagging.  “We have no spare mounts with us.”

The small entourage from Copper Keep is winding its way slowly home after the days at Runestone, with their Lord and Lady travelling in the style that befits their station.  Four mounted warriors flank the enclosed compartment; a fifth rides rear point, behind the trailing wagon filled with tents and other gear.

The need for the four-wheeled conveyances to bypass the castle in order to cross at the bridge, only serves to annoy Lenah.  It will be another two hours before their party reaches the valley’s mouth, where the watershed meanders out of the mountains and slows, and another hour for them to double back on the opposite side of the river.

She imagines she can see it even now in the distance – a blue-green vision in verdigris, the familiar towers and turrets of home.

“Send Alaris ahead over the ford **now** , and have him bring back our steeds.”

“Already sent him out last even,” grunts her husband.  Casting an eye round the edge of the open doorway, he adds, “Should be back soon.” _Don’t expect a horse._

On Bronn’s instructions, the big man had ridden ahead under cover of darkness, to ferret out any clansman-laid ambushes in the making, to scout out the security of the castle in their absence.

Heaving a sigh of impatience, Lenah persists.  “Then have a pair of your precious sworn men ride inside and give us _their_ horses.”  She longs for the freedom of being in the saddle, the control of guiding her own path.

Bronn studiously ignores her, though his jaw clenches warningly.  _Give it up, woman._

But she does not.  “If the mountain chieftains are looking to pick off travelers along the road, we are naught but caged rabbits for the killing inside this contraption.”

 _She has a point_ , concedes Bronn to himself, though he’ll be damned before he admits it to her.  Fortunately, he does not need to.

“Ho!” shouts the driver and several of the guards, as the column comes to a halt.  One hand on his sword hilt, the other on the door frame, Bronn stands and leans out of the cab.  From her position seated, Lenah can just make out the way his face relaxes in recognition.

“What word?” the Lord of Copper Keep hails his castellan when he pulls alongside.

Alaris moves out a short distance, walking his mount through an arc beside the carriage to burn off the animal’s energy.  The ride to intercept the retinue has been a rapid one.

“A couple came calling while you were away,” reveals the white-haired warrior, as though he himself had not been equally absent.  “Claimed to be old friends of yours.”

Lenah leans forward to mark his words.  Bronn scowls in uneasy perplexity.  Unexpected visitors are often unwelcome guests.

“I gave them quarters in the north tower – along with round-the-clock guards,” Alaris reports with a grim smile, showing his value as captain of the castle.

Bronn nods his approval.  “Did they leave a calling card?”

Alaris’ grizzled features form a sly twist.  “The man sports a golden hand.”

A single barking laugh bursts from Bronn’s chest.

“Calling card enough.”

 

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

“Jaime Fucking Lannister!”

Chest thrown out, Bronn struts expansively into the north solar, greeting their male guest with a shake of his head.  To the woman, he gives a slight bow.  “Brienne of Tarth.”

The lion and his lady are stretched out in comfort in the topmost room under the roof, nibbling from lacquered trays strewn with sliced apples, cubed cheese, and slices of dried sausage.  Both red and white wine stands ready in two tall carafes.  Through the long glass panels overhead pale sunlight streams, bringing meager warmth, and checkering the rich tapestries on the walls and the faded but still colourful carpet on the floor.

Jaime raises his glass to gesture at their surroundings.  “You’ve done pretty well for yourself here.”

Bronn can’t help but nod in agreement. 

“Thanks to your brother,” he remarks, looking around him with a critical eye. 

He has spent scant time in the guest wing, and judges it now as a creature seeking comfort, rather than as a lord enumerating the size of his keep.  He nods again, knowing the Great Chambers are even more sumptuously appointed.

“Good of you to call off your guards.”  Brienne’s voice drips with sarcasm.  Her noble nature has never led her to embrace the erstwhile sellsword’s personality, and Bronn for his part has never felt the slightest need to prove his worth to her.  He rejects her implied complaint with a careless shoulder roll.

“Not everyone who claims to be a friend is one.  And I have precious few, in any case.”

Jaime snorts behind his good hand, while Brienne silently withdraws her challenge by breaking eye contact.  Instead, she shifts her attention to watch the doorway with curiosity.  “Did not Lady Lenah return with you?”

Pausing to pour himself a bathtub-sized goblet of the Dornish grape harvest, Bronn replies, “Aye.  She’s just gettin’ a bit o’ the road dust off.”

He sinks into a plush armchair, lining up a column of cheese curds along the bolster for his enjoyment.  With exaggerated and clearly casual hospitality, he inquires, “I trust you find the accommodations adequate?”  In truth, he could not care less.

Jaime shrugs.  “We find the bed’s a bit hard,” he comments with a high degree of cheek.  Brienne glares at him.

“Means you’re not doin’ it right,” retorts Bronn with an equal amount of sass.  _Soon as you leave, we’ll give it a try_ , he promises silently.

Further male sparring is pre-empted by the arrival of the mistress of Copper Keep, much refreshed and wearing a clean, loose fitting gown.  Lenah joins them with a delighted laugh and an awkwardly-received hug for Brienne, a coquettish curtsy and a proffered hand for Jaime.

After the greetings, Lenah wastes no time filling a linen napkin with delectable bites.  She is famished after the journey, to be sure; yet she also finds her appetite rising at odd times.  What is the old saying?  _Eating for two._

Conversation naturally turns to an exchange of recent and current undertakings.  Bronn gives a rather succinct telling of his exploits in the Runestone tourney, peppered with pithy observations about the skills of those born on the path to knighthood.  Lenah considers revealing her family state of affairs to their friends, but finds both the opportunity and the words elude her. 

When Jaime and Brienne tell the tale of their travels and their reason for being in the Vale, a quick look of awareness passes between the sellsword and his lady.

“We think Sansa Stark may be in the Eyrie,” Jaime concludes, as Brienne tips her chin eagerly in assent.

Bronn takes a long sip of wine, relishing the fruity taste of the grape on his tongue, almost as much as the richness of the news he is about to impart.

“She’s not in the Eyrie.”

An even pause follows his words.

“You’re certain,” scoffs Jaime after a moment.  He knows the shrewd former mercenary can be infuriatingly flip in his speech, but he has also learned the man does not deal in imagination or falsehood.

“She’s in the Royce keep,” Bronn says off-handedly.

Jaime and Brienne both perk their ears at this, leaning forward.

“Wait,” Brienne interjects, more doubting than her husband.  “You’ve seen her?”  She looks to Lenah, who only covers her lips and waves an affirmative, unable to reply past the mouthful of cheese and sausage she’s masticating.

“Aye,” nods Bronn. “We’ve seen her.”  When two intent faces implore him to continue, he expounds.  “Baelish winters there with Little Lord Suckling, and his ‘niece’…as he calls her.”  He sends a knowing eyeroll in Jaime’s direction.  “Not the same as your ‘niece’.”

Clenching his jaw in annoyance, Jaime chooses to ignore the disrespect, for the sake of the greater good of their mission.  “We need to devise a way to get her out,” he states resolutely, knowing they need the other couple’s knowledge of Runestone to do this.

Bronn rises to help himself to tidbits of cured venison, tossing back over his shoulder, “The girl seemed content enough to me.”

Objection comes from his ladywife.  “She’s a hostage, Bronn,” Lenah chides him.  “She’s doing anything she can to survive.”

Eying her sharply, Bronn drops back into his seat.  “She got away from Cersei.  That must count for something.”

“She’s still a pawn,” insists Lenah, remembering the fear behind the girl’s lashes when called by her true name.  “She’s merely traded masters.”  A poignant pause, a journey into the shared mind of one kept against her will.  “In time, she might even warm to her captors, to preserve her sanity.”

Lenah feels suddenly chilled with memory, and reaches behind her for the knit throw that adorns her seatback.

“Lenah has the right of it,” murmurs Jaime.  Well he knows what his sister is capable of, what tortures she can work on the minds of those she means to keep, to control.  The poor wolf girl has learned no other way than appeasement till now.

Brienne draws herself up in her chair, her demeanor staunch.  “I – we – must take her to safety.”

“Sounds impossible,” mutters Bronn darkly.  “Doubt she’s ever alone.”

The room grows quiet with imagined defeat, until a light comes into Brienne’s cornflower blue irises.  “When Sansa was in Kings Landing, I observed her many times, in the hour before vespers, taking solitude in the godswood.”

Now tension fills the air, the tension of possibility.

Jaime’s brow puckers in concentration, as he strives to recall his childhood lessons of the greater and lesser castles of the Seven Kingdoms.  “Is there even a godswood at Runestone?”

“Yes,” says Lenah in a contemplative tone.  “On the seaward side.”

The Lannister and his bride share a triumphant smile. 

“That’s it then,” decrees Jaime with finality.  He turns to their host.

“Are you with us, Ser Bronn?”

 

****************

 

 

“If Sansa Stark goes missing from Runestone, isn’t this the first place Littlefinger will look?”

Now back in their private chambers, Lenah has had time to think…and to worry.

“Most like,” agrees Bronn, pacing off his own unease at the foot of the bed.  “But I can’t stop those two do-gooders from going after her.”  _And once deprived of his prize, there’s nothing to prevent Littlefinger from trying to take mine._

He stops and turns to his wife in agitation.  “Dammit, Lenah!  You should never have revealed yourself to him!”

Lenah looks nearly sick with regret.  “Done is done,” she says softly, then switches to a plea.  “Don’t go with them.  If you’re seen, Baelish will know _exactly_ who took Lady Sansa.”

Running his hand through his hair, Bronn weighs it out in his mind, caught between a rock and hard place, coming eventually to an imperfect decision.

“Maybe I can stop them from doing something stupid once they get there,” he reasons, being not at all facetious.  “I’ll stay out of sight.”

Lenah’s face crumples and he goes to her, pulling her into his strong arms to allay her fears, willing them all onto his own shoulders.  He tilts her pinched visage up to his.

“Besides, might be I owe them my aid in this.  They were at my side when I rescued another noble lady.”

He uses his lips to still any more discussion.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to the ASOIF wiki, there is a godswood in the Eyrie, one which has a statue of a weeping woman at its center, instead of a heart tree. For my purposes, I have moved this sacred grove to Runestone.


	10. CHAPTER TEN

Through achingly blue skies uncluttered by clouds, the autumn sun cuts its shallow arc to the west, showing its farewell face to the Bay of Crabs.  It casts its warmth and golden light across the coastal plain, forestalling the advance of something colder for a time.  Only the deepest recesses at the base of the fortress’ eastern wall remain in shadow, still sparkling with the diamond light of snow that hides from the solar rays.

Since winter’s warning over a week ago, the vassal lands of House Royce have thawed, the people returning to the harvest and the brisk commerce their lord encourages.  Inside the castle walls, the fortnightly market day is underway as scheduled – a dawn to dusk display of wares, a disorderly open-air gathering for buying and selling and bartering. 

Runestone’s massive portcullis is partially raised, its lattice-work beams casting a checkerboard shadowplay over the stream passing beneath – foot traffic and donkey carts, horse-drawn wagons and wayfarers – all enroute to and from the parade ground.  Those merchants too hard-pressed to afford the user’s fee for a spot on the green, and those hungry to make an early sale, are arrayed along both sides of the wide mud track leading to the Bronze Gate.

One such roadside awning is doing a healthy business this day.  Much of the buyers’ and browsers’ interest is drawn by the aesthetically pleasing presentation of goods, as well as by the practical necessity of the items arranged.  Several men mill about the carefully arranged sprawl, measuring for boots and vambraces, fingering scabbards and sheaths, trying on the many outergarments offered.

Nodding happily to himself, the vendor calculates how many more sales he might make before the sun sets and the gates close.  There is still a good two hours of daylight remaining, and then there will be the mass exodus after the trumpets sound and the market is declared consummate.

Resting a roaming eye on the clothing racks, he notes an exceedingly tall figure with a shock of straw for a crown, slotting through the hangers draped with cloaks.  Like the successful merchant he is, he hops from his bench and scampers over to facilitate the sale.

“If ye don’t find the length you desire, I have more in the wayn,” he offers the customer’s wool-and- leather clad back. 

A yellow-haired head turns, and he is fixed by the most extraordinary pair of blue eyes he has ever seen.

“Have you these cloaks with hoods?” Brienne inquires brusquely. 

The man nods in mute surprise, having expected the low- pitched tones of a man.

Her voice softens when she sees how taken aback he is.

“I will need two.”

************************

 

The inactivity, the _waiting_ , is beginning to grate on him.  He’s crisscrossed the clearing thrice over, poked around curiously in the beds of the wagons parked there, and checked their quartet of tethered horses numerous times.  It is not in Bronn’s nature to sit idly by on the sidelines, but he has made a promise…and a plan.

Over the crackle of the campfire between Copper Keep and Runestone, discussion had sparked over their best organization upon arrival.  Spiriting personnel into and out of an armed fortress was never an easy task, yet an open assay is out of the question.  Any challenge at the gate would run the risk of recognition for both Jaime and Bronn.  But the tall lass…she’s never marked time with the Royce garrison, nor has she any distinguishing traits other than her height.

 _And who better to soothe a skittish filly than a calm older mare?_   That had been his argument – the one that had eventually carried the conversation, though not without a look of insult from Brienne.  Now the chaos of the market day crowd and the relatively unguarded flow at the gate lend a perfect opportunity for Brienne to slip inside unnoticed.

 _Got lucky there_ , he muses.  Any other day, it would have been a damn sight more difficult for any combination of their trio to pass by the pikemen at the portcullis unquestioned.  Likewise, leaving with an additional person in tow could only draw suspicion – enough suspicion to reveal that person as Littlefinger’s “niece”.

Should they all three have entered separately today and convened inside?  _Perhaps._   But the truth still stands that he and the Lannister are likely to be marked, and the girl is likely to be spooked by too many strangers.

 _Done is done_ , Bronn tells himself, smiling a bit as he recognizes one of Lenah’s favorite phrases in his head.  _Besides, the lady knight can take care of herself._

Heaving a sigh of ennui, he begins his fourth circuit of the staging yard.

 

******************

 

Now cloaked from head to toe in nondescript grey, Brienne continues to meander with the crowd in the direction of the castle’s entrance.  Draped over her arm inside the fabric folds is the second cowl, another disguise for one nearly as tall as she.  Equally concealed is her magnificent sword Oathkeeper, and thereby also her status as a warrior.

Brienne searches the stalls uncertainly, seeking inspiration, a prop to enhance her credibility in her mummer’s role.  The three of them had agreed their best chance for extracting Lady Sansa from Baelish’s clutches lay in sneaking her out.  To that end, it had been calculated that an appeal from a sister female would fare better than any approach involving either of two men the Stark girl had reason to distrust. 

Not to mention, both gentlemen – she employs the term loosely where Bronn is concerned – were readily recognizable.  One for his golden hand, the other for his less-than-golden tongue, which must still ring in recent memory with some of Runestone’s men-at-arms.

And so it falls to Brienne to find a means of blending into the peasantry.

She nearly passes it by.

“Round and red!” calls out the orchard master’s apprentice.  “Apples for your pies!  Don’t decry the size!”

With a carnival hawker’s aplomb, the fellow juggles spheres as fresh with colour as his own crimson cheeks.  Although the biggest and best fruits are reserved for the noblemen’s cider presses, all the inland groves are free to sell their seconds by the basket or the bushel to the smallfolk.  Some sellers are more enterprising and entertaining than others.

Brienne pauses, arrested as much by the airborne spectacle and the sight of the heaping mounds of rosy beauty, as she is by the niggling idea forming in her head.

“A basket,” she blurts out, almost before the thought is fully formed.

A coin changes hands and she is soon on her way, the wicker handle in the crook of her elbow, the spare cloak folded small and covering the hanging contents.

When a fresh surge of humanity swarms past, Brienne trails the periphery of a group of gossiping farmwives, at the last minute hunching her shoulders and adopting a shambling gait -- to mask her height, to suggest more years than she owns.

 

*************************

 

In an effort to preserve his sanity and his shoe leather, Bronn finally returns to where his companion waits, dropping to the dirt and resting his back on a shared wagon wheel.  Casually, he reaches behind him to pull free the chock that blocks the round of spokes from rolling on the uneven ground.

“The farmer may have need of that,” remarks Jaime sarcastically from beside him, shifting his spine to make room.

Bronn shrugs, weighing the oaken triangle in his gloved palm.

“He’s got three others.”

“What do _you_ want it for?” scoffs the Lannister, bemused, whilst keeping an eye on the column of pedestrians leading from the castle.

“Distraction,” answers the sellsword curtly, pulling his waist knife from his belt.

Legs bent, forearms resting on his thighs, he carves a thin curl from the block, applying the blade with the dexterity afforded by his fingerless hand coverings.  He takes several long passes across the wood with the sickle-curved edge, not certain what lies within the grain, yet with a figure already taking shape in his imagination. 

He soon works into a lazy rhythm, honing the pyramid in his hands.  The action is soothing to him, a way to whittle away the hours, a habit that remains with him from his boyhood.

In time, after the basic outline is accentuated, he switches his grip to the narrow part of the blade, closest to the hilt, using his strong digits to scrape and refine his work.

As the moments of silence build on one another like the pile of shavings between Bronn’s knees, Jaime fidgets uncomfortably, his buttocks growing numb.  Eventually he turns his head, indicating with a curious frown, the transformation taking place in the sellsword’s hands.

“What is it?”

“None of your business, is what it is.”

A few more moments pass, with Jaime studying Bronn’s progress.  The noble lion has never tried this pastime.  “That would be easier with a smaller knife,” he comments.

Pursing his lips, Bronn shoots back sardonically, “Well…I don’t _have_ a smaller knife, now do I?”  He is beyond weary of this one’s needling.

Without a word, Jaime reaches into the pocket of his breeches and produces a compact folding blade, holding it out triumphantly.  Bronn gives the barest of nods, before claiming the staghorn handle and thumbing the edge free of its slot.  As he continues his carving project, he glances at Jaime with a speculative challenge.

“Answer me this.  Assuming your bride walks out that gate with your brother’s wife, what’s your plan then?”

Jaime looks away, his shoulders twitching nonchalantly.  “We improvise.”

“Don’t know what I’m doing here,” grouses Bronn, after a pause punctuated by an eyeroll.

“We’ll need a place to take her,” says Jaime in a mild tone, his voice trailing off, as though this were the only logical expectation.

“No.”  Bronn grits his teeth and tenses, the blade biting deeper than he means it to, sticking in the hard wood.  “Don’t even think it.”

“Just for a few days,” the Lannister assures him.  “To re-group.”

With a glare, Bronn stills his busywork, stabbing the knife into the soil beside his boot in annoyance.

“My aid ends there,” he declares, his voice taut, his vision locked on the other man.  “My debt is paid.”  _Something a Lannister should understand._

Jaime tips his chin, returning the gravity of the moment.

“Agreed.”

 

 


	11. CHAPTER ELEVEN

Beyond the crenellated parapets, the cries of gulls sound over the rhythmic lapping of the waves, lending a lull to the little used godswood of Runestone.  No blanket of moss cushions the hardscrabble path; no foliage of red brightens the landscape or beckons the ruminating wanderer.  Here against the easternmost wall of the fortress, closest to the sea, the air is too salty, the soil too rocky, for any weirwood to grow.

In its stead stands a statue of a weeping woman – her nearly transparent alabaster gown pooled about her bare feet, her marble tresses draping her bowed shoulders, her cold stone tears flowing down pale cheeks, frozen in time and tribulation.

Crumpled on the ground beneath the sorrowful sculpture is a flesh and blood woman, her back bent in despair, her titian hair only partly shielding a face wet with salty trails of sadness.

“Why do you weep, my lady?”

In her guise of market matron, Brienne approaches slowly, addressing the one she seeks with a compassion that is no play-acting, offering refuge in her voice and in her presence.

The lovely redhead comes to her feet and turns tearful eyes the colour of the sea to Brienne. 

“My family is dead.  My home is gone,” she enumerates bleakly.  “And now I am to be married to the bastard of my enemies.”

“You are Sansa Stark,” says Brienne gently.

Sansa regards the other woman with a look of self-defeat.  What use denial?  Lord Petyr had revealed her to the lesser lords of the Vale when they broke their fast on the day the Runestone tourney disbanded.  Shortly thereafter, he had cemented his plan to unite the North and the Vale by marriage, with her as the bride and the price.

Every day since then, she has walked the battlements at dawn and the godswood at dusk, wishing her life was over, praying for a means of escape.

Now she gives an affirmative nod to the question of her name, a gesture couched within a gaze of apprehension.

“And you are?”

“I am Brienne of Tarth,” the cloaked woman says, drawing herself up to her full height and pulling aside the folds of her robe to reveal the blade at her hip.  “I was sworn to your mother Catelyn.  Her last tasking to me, was to find and protect her daughters.”

Sansa hears these words and hope leaps in her heart, only to be tempered by skepticism.

“How do you propose to do that?” she queries, trying to keep the excitement from her voice.

Brienne moves closer, lending a conspiratorial air.  “The first step is to get you through the gate unnoticed.”

Sansa peers over Brienne’s shoulder, searching the barren rock garden for signs of life.

“Are you alone?”

“I have aid,” acknowledges Brienne.  “But our goal is to spirit you away unknown, not fight you free in vainglory.”

Sansa strives to wrap her mind, warped by the betrayals done her, around this bestowal of succor.

“My mother trusted you with her life?”

“Your mother trusted me with _your_ life.”

A beat passes, a bond begins to form.

Eye to the last slanting rays of the sun and the way they catch the fire in Lady Sansa’s locks, Brienne uncovers her basket, shaking free the second cowl.  Behind her, the first blasts of a trumpet volley sound, and she starts uneasily.

“You must come with me now, my lady,” Brienne murmurs urgently, not wanting to frighten the girl into refusal, but knowing their window of opportunity will close when the portcullis comes down.  “And you must cover your hair.”  She holds out her forearm with the garment folded across.  “We can speak more, later.”

Sansa’s thoughts leap back to the Battle of the Blackwater, to the night she shrank from the Hound’s offer to carry her away from King’s Landing, away from Cersei.  She remembers his frightening visage, his unsettling intensity.  Her childish self had missed the nurturing soul beneath the scarred exterior.  How much less intimidating and more inviting is this apparition of deliverance?

The trumpets sound a second time.  The two women lock eyes.

Sansa reaches for the drape of clothing.

 

********************

 

“Halt!”

The dual-throated command echoes from both the pulpits flanking the Bronze Gate, where a pair of pikemen in pointed helms stand guard, extracting fun and tribute from the last market-goers straggling home. To their minds, the sport is meager payment indeed after a day on their feet.

Brienne and her charge keep their heads down, averting their eyes, praying the challenge is not directed at them.  Self-consciously, Sansa tucks the edges of her hood around her tell-tale red locks.

They have hurried all the long way through the parade grounds without attracting attention, and now have only steps to go to realize freedom.  But the Gods are not smiling upon them.

“Halt!”  The word rings out again, warningly.

“You there!  Wot you got in the basket?” one of the soldiers calls down, dipping his weapon to point unmistakably at Brienne.

Mind racing, Brienne does as she is bidden.  She feels Sansa’s trembling hand take her arm, but the lady warrior gently shakes her off, needing to keep unencumbered lest it come to a fight.  She hopes the girl has the sense to run if it does.  She herself will have little chance of escape from two elevated attackers, but Sansa might slip away in the melee.

“Please, kind sers,” Brienne pleads obsequiously, wringing her hands and glancing from one high platform to the other.  So far only the single man’s weapon is trained on them.  The other guard is watching in bored amusement.

“My daughter is not feeling well,” Brienne fabricates weakly, hoping for sympathy.  “I must get her home.”

 _“My daughter is not feeling well,”_ mocks the bored guard in a clipped accent.  He leans forward to take a keener look at them.  “Been spending time with fancy folk, wench?”

Too late, Brienne realizes her mistake.  Her cultured turns-of-phrase do not serve her well here.

“None more fancy than the fine folk of Castle Royce,” she interjects quickly.  “Apple?”

She reaches up, handing each man a fruit, drawing their attention, as the Stark girl suddenly begins a very convincing rendition of the dry heaves.

Under cover of her cloak, Sansa pushes a finger down her throat, inducing the true evacuation of all the nervous bile in her stomach.  With her back to the twin podiums and her head buried in her hood, she runs past the gate and vomits into the roadside weeds.

The guards’ faces curl in disgust.

“Be gone with your pestilence – the both of you!” one barks.  A mail-gloved hand waves them through.

*****************

 

As fleeting as the evening shadows stealing through the wagon yard, a pair of hooded women weave amongst the thinning crowd of departing merchants, seeking two specific faces.  When they finally find the individuals who wear those faces, standing apart near the edge of the clearing, the light is not yet so dim that Sansa does not recognize her brother-by-law. 

And the other.

“You again!” she accuses Bronn in surprise, as she pulls off her head covering to widen her field of vision.

“Back to ginger, I see,” Bronn comments laconically, nodding in greeting and approval.  _Drapes should match the carpet.  Jarring otherwise,_ says the voice of experience inside his head.

Tilting his chin, Jaime spears Sansa with his own gaze of curiosity.  “Is there a reason for the reversal?” he asks.  “I thought you were masquerading as Baelish’s niece.”

Sansa hugs her arms, barely controlling a shudder.

“Alayne Stone is no more.  I am once again Sansa Stark, bride-to-be of Ramsey Snow.  Apparently Lord Bolton has seen fit to legitimize him,” she adds cuttingly, refusing to use the noble name for the known bastard.

“Damn and double damn!” curses Bronn under his breath, drawing the faintly scandalized scrutiny of all.   

 _Lenah’s balance of secrets just tipped out of our favor,_ his thoughts swirl into place.  _No reason now for Littlefinger **not** to bargain her whereabouts to the Leech Lord.  Or the Bitch Queen. _

The realization sends an icicle dancing down his spine.

Ignoring Bronn’s outburst, Brienne herds everyone towards the treeline, feeling a sense of urgency to put Runestone far behind them before sleep.  But Sansa is still a bit unbelieving of her fortuitous deliverance.  Her feet move slowly, as a question passes her lips.

“Why are you helping me?”  She addresses the men, laying a hand on Jaime’s arm to stay him.  “Lady Brienne told me what brings _her_ , but why the two of you?”

Thinking of his mandate from his sister, Jaime does not meet her eyes.

“The alternative is something neither you nor I can live with,” he replies, quietly grim.

Sansa swallows hard, then turns to Bronn.

He pulls himself out of his misgiving to tap his customary sarcasm, now shot with more irony than any of them know.

“Rescuing damsels in distress is what I do.”

 


	12. CHAPTER TWELVE

Using her apron to shield her hands from scalding, the kitchen apprentice tilts the delicate china vessel, sending a stream of bracing tea from its fluted spout.  The steaming liquid fills the wide yet shallow cup, the heat bleeding through the thin porcelain to darken the hues of the bronze sigil painted upon it.  An elegant, well-manicured hand curls two fingers around a handle as slender as the bones of a bird, bringing the morning beverage to lips pursed beneath a tidy moustache not yet gone to salt-and-pepper.

“Shall I pour for Lady Sansa?” asks the serving woman uncertainly, poised to decant at a second place setting.  The makings of a refined repast for two are spread across the table, replete with tarts and jams, sweets and meats; but one seat at the board is empty.

Lord Petyr Baelish blows across the surface of his teacup, using the simple action to disguise his nagging concern.  He takes a careful sip before replying.

“I have not seen Lady Sansa since midday fore,” he murmurs in his voice of polished gravel.  “She did not join me at dinner.”

Baelish turns his full and careful consideration to the compartment of his mind that governs Catelyn’s daughter.  He knows her to be an emotional girl, with a depth of feeling that will one day mature into the fire of her mother.

He has kept his distance, given her space these past days, seeing how upset she has been over the match he arranged.  Sansa has been spending long hours in her rooms, or wandering the castle grounds in melancholia.   But she has never missed two meals in succession, certainly not the lemoncakes served every morning, at his behest, to mollify her.

“Go check her chambers,” Baelish commands solicitously. “She may require assistance of some womanly sort.”

As the cooking servant bustles from the room, Lord Petyr reaches for a sheaf of papers and a sweetcake, feigning unconcern.  With eyes hooded to watch her departure, he settles his spine against his high back chair, to avail himself of the morning light angling through the diamond-paned windows.

He is still in the same pose when she returns, though his tea has gone cold.  As does his blood when she speaks.

“She is not there, milord.  Her bed was not slept in.”

 

********************

 

Some one hundred miles south and west, the escape party is strung out on horseback, slanting their way across country when they can to avoid the roads, using the designated routes when they must to make time.  Brienne flanks Lady Sansa continually, acting as both guide and guard.  The two knights bring up the rear, pausing atop each rise to scour the horizon behind for any sign of pursuit.

Until they reach the mountains, the moorlands offer little in the way of cover.  Their best hope is to put as many leagues between themselves and Runestone as they can, before Sansa is definitely missed.  Another night’s camp and another half-day’s ride will put them safely out of sight within the walls of Copper Keep.

Spurring his horse down the gentle incline to catch up, Jaime reins in alongside a bored-looking Bronn.  The sellsword has been singing for the past fifteen minutes; his current chorus is some dirty ditty about a Dornishman and his wife and the most intimate of kisses.

Jaime waits until after the melodic saga reaches its climax on the strength of Bronn’s baritone, and dies away to silence.

“Autobiographical?” he teases, to stem the flow of song.

“Ha!”  Bronn rolls in the saddle, in lieu of a swagger.  “At least I lived to tell the tale.”  A roguish grin hides beneath his beard, as his eyes smoulder with memory.  _Just barely._

Jaime brings him back to the present with a rudely-timed question.  “Did you finish your mysterious carving?”

“Almost,” replies Bronn without elaborating.  “Tonight.”  His hand strays to his saddlebag, checking for the bulge of the wooden figure tucked inside.

Casting a look of mistrust at his companion, Jaime decides a reminder is in order.  “Then I believe you will have something of mine to return.”

Bronn turns to him in amusement.  “Worried I might keep your toy knife?”

“Frankly…yes,” Jaime grumbles, looking straight ahead.  “Some gratitude might be nice as well.”

Bronn rolls his eyes.  “Thanks for the use of your little prick…I mean toadsticker,” he supplies with hearty insincerity.

Jaime cringes in annoyance.  Leave it to the sellsword to arm a simple thank you with a juvenile barb.

“Maybe Lenah will get you one for your name day,” he speculates condescendingly.  He pauses through several rollicking bounces of his steed’s stride, before adding in a dry tone, “Then you can show her your _much bigger_ poker in gratitude.”

Bronn slides an eye sideways in mild surprise, hiding a smirk.

“That’s the idea,” he rumbles approvingly, as though it is only meet that Jaime acknowledge the size of his cock.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Jaime says wearily.  “That was sarcasm.”

“Aye, that I gathered.  But it was **bawdy** sarcasm.”  Bronn seems both smug and gleeful.  “I’ll make an improper motherfucker of you yet.”  _Sisterfucker, really_ , he shrugs mentally.

The look on the Lannister’s face is worth many a saddle sore mile.

“Gods forbid!”

Bronn’s chuckle follows Jaime as he spurs into a canter to join the women.

 

**********************

 

“She is nowhere to be found within the keep, my lord.”

The Lord Protector of the Vale regards the captain of his guard narrowly.  Slowly, he closes his book and rises from his armchair, folding his long-fingered hands inside his sleeves.

“A beauty like that does not simply vanish into thin air, Ser Oswyld,” Baelish purrs patronizingly.  “Someone saw her.  Look again.”

The tall guardsman dips his head in deference.  “As you command.”

Stiff-shouldered in his armour, he turns to leave, then pauses as though recalling something, and resumes once again his stance of attention.

“My lord.”

Littlefinger, half-turned to the window, gives his glancing permission to speak.

“The watcher in the crow’s nest reported seeing someone who could have been the lady, walking the ramparts in the ninth hour.”

Baelish does not break eye contact, but behind his inscrutable stare, his mind is tossing up wild scenarios.  He knows she has been despondent, despairing.  Is it possible?

It would be suicide.

“Conduct a second search of the castle,” he commands again. “And comb the base of the outside walls for her body.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a very short chapter, hopefully just a bit of tension-building.
> 
> The 9th hour is mid-afternoon.


	13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of trigger warnings: passing mention of miscarriage, depiction of dead game animal

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

The chimes roll slowly from the old timekeeper’s depths, marking the hours here at Copper Keep with the same grave precision as was heard back in Three Wolves.  The somber sound can never completely permeate halls so vast as those of the longcase clock’s new home; yet within the vaulted entryway the elegant ticking sentinel stands, waiting to greet all who pass the copper portal, existing to comfort a displaced daughter in new surroundings.

Crossing the tiled foyer on slippered feet, Lenah pauses, turning a fond head to the familiar numbered face as she passes.  For as long as she can remember, the pulse of her life has seemed tied to the metronome swinging inside the clock’s framed glass casing.  It may have been her lord husband’s cheeky covetousness that brought the mahogany masterpiece with them, but she is glad to have this marker of her past keeping pace for her future.

Hugging her armload of books closer to her chest, Lenah poises her body to move on.  Then she catches sight of her sidelong reflection in the mirror-like surface.

Her green eyes knit with concentration.  A frown curls her mouth downward.  Pivoting slightly on her heels, she runs a palm from beneath her breastbone to below her navel, smoothing her clothing, twisting to view different angles in the polished pane.

“Is aught amiss, milady?”

With a duster made of bound pin feathers poking out from an apron pocket, Delores watches from the doorway of the library, a kind smile on her face.

“Naught but my burgeoning belly.”  Lenah cannot keep the slight edge of irritation from her tone.  _I did not think it would be noticeable this soon,_ she laments without giving voice.

“’Tis only the babe growing inside you.  It should be a source of joy,” says Delores mildly.  She has delivered too many stillborn, held the hand of too many weeping mothers; a pregnancy proceeding apace is a celebration of life.

Lenah shrugs her eyebrows worriedly.  “And will it be a source of joy to my lord husband – this thickening waistline, my tilted hips?”  She thrusts out her pelvis, previewing the Lenah to come.

“Any true man would find it so,” Delores assures her with perhaps more blind conviction than wisdom.  “A testament to his prowess.”

“I pray the Mother you are not wrong.”  This vain pre-occupation is one way to divert her mind from dwelling too long on the precarious safety of those absent.  And so she indulges it.

After one last look in the glass, Lenah tears her eyes away, shaking her head uncertainly.

“He is a man, pure and simple.  That much is true.”  _And I have no illusions about his priorities._

“Milady.”  The older woman takes several steps forward, giving gravity to her words by way of her presence.  Full well does she grasp the weight of her mistress’ misgivings.

“Ser Bronn cares for you more than you know.”

Steady as a heartbeat the clock ticks on, punctuating the moments as Lenah holds her maidservant’s stare for a time.  Then, with a brusque roll of the shoulders, she pushes past to disappear into the reading room.

 

********************

 

Using his false hand like a golden scythe, Jaime Lannister pushes his way through the overgrowth of brambles, his boot steps crunching in the dry bracken at his feet. In his flesh-and-blood hand, he chokes the neck of a scarf tied up like a knapsack, its contents swinging heavily with his momentum.  He gains the clearing, only to find that he is not the first to return from their food foray.

Bronn is busy sparking moss and tinder to flame, with a few heavy branches and a knife-speared rabbit nearby.  The sellsword looks up at his approach.

“You really _are_ shit at hunting,” Bronn observes upon finding the Lannister to be unsurprisingly empty-handed of any small game.

Jaime can only stare.

“This heather is teeming with quail and coney,” Bronn reports jovially, as he coaxes the fire to life.  “See any?”

Jaime frowns, made to feel ineffectual once again. 

“What was I supposed to do?  Throw a rock?”  He focuses on the pierced body of Bronn’s kill, as the sellsword rolls his eyes in silence and proceeds to clean and dress the carcass.  Jaime watches in ill-humoured fascination.

“Where’d you learn to throw a knife like that?” he asks with grudging admiration, while toeing aside broken twigs and small stones to clear a square of ground at his feet.

A crooked quirk of a smile crosses Bronn’s face.  “Me and my mates growing up – we kept the alley clear of rats.  It was a contest.”

Jaime drops cross-legged to the dirt, cradling his bundle carefully in the nest inside his thighs.

“Charming,” he comments.  “I’d rather get a cat.”  He has visions of junior cut-throats honing their skills with a blade in the back lanes of whatever Gods-forsaken place Bronn spent his childhood.

The sellsword shakes his head.  “Would have needed a bobcat to take on some of those buggers.”  Jaime shudders, inspiring an answering chuckle from Bronn.  “I didn’t grow up a castle lad like you.”

“Casterly Rock had its share of rats,” says Jaime cryptically.  He places the knotted neckerchief on the ground between them, fumbling laboriously to open it.  He’ll be damned if he uses his teeth here, the way he did when he was alone in the heath.

Bronn glances his way, betraying no reaction, spitting the skinned hare in silence.

“Where are the ladies?” queries Jaime as his strong fingers work the twisted fabric.

“Doin’ lady things, I imagine.”  The meat begins to sizzle and Bronn adds another branch to the fire.

With a small smirk of triumph, Jaime frees the cloth corners and lays open his contribution to their meal.

“I found quail eggs.”  He is a bit uncertain how to serve eggs in a campsite, but he seems to recall the Lannister army cooks managing it somehow.

Taking stock of the speckled haul, Bronn remarks, “Rather have the hen that laid ‘em.”  Then he relents, noting the Lannister’s crestfallen look.  “We can bank them in the coals after.”

Jaime busies himself brushing out the nesting material that found its way into his makeshift satchel, pulling a stiff brown quill from the debris.

“Here, something for your cap.”  He sticks the feather upright in the soil.

After a moment, Bronn takes it up and hides it in a pocket, remarking off-handedly, “The lad back home might find a use for it.”

_Home.  
_

Had he just used that word?  It had been half a lifetime – more – since he had called any place by that name.

Home is where the heart is _,_ whispers a teasing voice in his head.  Nostrils flaring, Bronn exhales in rejection of the very idea.

_Home is where the fucking is, more like_ , he decides smugly.

 

 

 

 

 


	14. CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Dammit!”  mutters Sansa in a most unlady-like manner, bringing her welling fingertip to her lips and sucking away a drop of blood.

“Careful, my lady,” cautions Brienne unnecessarily, pulling her hand from the thicket with several plump blackberries nestled in her battle-scarred fingers.  “Why don’t you carry the basket, while I brave the thorns?”  In truth, she feels faintly ridiculous toting the wicker over her arm like a maiden in a fairytale; nevertheless, the vestigial prop from her infiltration of Runestone is undeniably useful when gathering fruit among the brambles.

Sansa smiles gratefully and takes the handle, following along as the lady warrior searches the wild, arcing stems for more of the blue-black clusters.  Each handful is like a precious reward, earned by sharp eyes and tough skin.

Lagging behind, Sansa Stark observes the imposing athletic woman who has brought her on the road to safety.  She has various vague memories from her time in the capital, of things seen, of rumours heard, but also many questions.

“You say you swore your sword to my mother,” Sansa ventures, the opening volley of a deeper conversation.

Brienne glances up, then quickly away.

“Yes.  After Renly Baratheon’s death.”  The moment that still haunts her dreams – a shadow with a blade, an assassin conceived in ancient magic by a bitter brother’s fire priestess.

“Then why weren’t you there to protect her at the Red Wedding?”  The words come out hard, an accusation, fraught with all of a bereaved daughter’s trauma and loss.

Brienne’s broad face sags in sadness.

“I wish I could have been,” she whispers.  “Lady Catelyn had sent me south with Jaime Lannister as prisoner, to exchange for your sister Arya’s freedom in King’s Landing.”

Brienne’s wide shoulders rise and fall with a deep and earnest sigh. She would have surely died that fateful day along with everyone else, but the chivalrous heart of her sees the honour in that.  Yet there is so much joy she would never have known, had her life ended there in the banquet hall of House Frey.

Lady Sansa digests this explanation, her face still pulled taut in anguish.  “And now my mother and brother are dead, and Ser Jaime is what…your lover?”

Her throat catches at the thought of Robb.  If Arya had been Jon’s favorite, she had been Robb’s – he with his sense of duty and appreciation of tradition.  So much alike they had been, all those ages ago in Winterfell. 

Brienne’s voice deepens, as do the shadows of time and memory across her vision. 

“No one could have saved Catelyn Stark or anyone else at the Twins that day.”  She pauses, in regret, in remembrance.  Then she shakes herself, moving on physically as well as narratively.  “After that, everything became so complicated.”  She glosses over the center of the story.  “Arya wasn’t in King’s Landing and you were married to Tyrion Lannister.”

“And you and Ser Jaime?”  Sansa’s curiosity on that point is not to be denied.   She has noted the bond between the two White Cloaks, as well as the proximity of their sleeping rolls.

“Ser Jaime and I became prisoners together…and fought together…” – a small reminiscent smile at the dual meaning – “…and survived together…”

“And fell in love together,” Sansa finishes for her, eyes shining with her fondness for romantic endings. 

After a moment, she asks with lesser curiosity, “And what of Ser Bronn?”

“Pardon?”  Still lost in the past, it takes Brienne a beat to return to the present.  She takes the question to likewise be one pertaining to romantic pairings.  “His lady awaits at Copper Keep.”

“I assume then, that is where we’re going,” observes Lady Stark.  She recalls the woman who approached her at the banquet, but she has no knowledge of the house or its heritage.  “Is that her ancestral home?”

“No.”  Brienne knits her brow, not sure of the lineal history there.  “The castle was a bequeath from the Crown to Ser Bronn after the Battle of the Blackwater.  That and his knighthood.”  A prim, sarcastic smile tickles Brienne’s lips.

“And Lady Lenah?”

“Lady Lenah was a protectee of Ser Bronn’s, taken by the Boltons to settle an old score.  He enlisted the aid of Ser Jaime and myself to retrieve her before any harm could befall.”

_Rescuing damsels in distress is what I do._

The words come back to Sansa from the night of her escape.  She had never before given much thought to Tyrion’s sardonic swordsman, but she recognizes the trappings of a passionate adventure when she hears one.

“Our basket is near full, my lady.  Shall we return?”  Brienne marks the thin plume of smoke rising from the direction where she calculates the clearing to be.

Obediently, Sansa hikes her skirts and turns her footsteps, still mulling over the things she has heard, her breath coming a little faster with the thrill of it all.

 

*************************

 

It is emotion of a different sort that drives the air from Littlefinger’s lungs.  Rarely does he allow his veneer of control to slip, but his frustration with the mystery of Sansa’s disappearance is rapidly giving way to hollow dread.

“Is it possible her bones were drug away by scavengers?” Baelish asks his guardsman from behind fingers steepled before his pounding temples.

  
“I do not think so,” replies the captain, his face ruddy from hours in the sun and wind.  “I had the men beat the bushes well out from the walls.  There was nary a sign of anything – no blood, no ripped clothing.  Nothing.”

“Did she sprout wings then?”  Baelish spits out the question sarcastically, then waves a hand for silence as a servant enters to light candles against the advancing darkness. 

When they are alone again, Lord Petyr’s aide continues with a cryptic suggestion.

“Not wings, my lord.  But perhaps wheels.”

“Your meaning?”  Baelish tempers his skepticism carefully.  He does not consider the Stark girl near resourceful enough to engineer an escape by wagon, let alone talk her way past the gate.

Ser Oswyld nods hopefully towards the pitcher of water on a nearby table.  Once given his leave, he slakes his thirst, while his employer waits impatiently.

“Do not forget, my lord,” Oswyld brokers, once his glass is empty.  “The last day the lady was seen, was Market Day.  She could have hidden away in some merchant’s cart, or convinced one of them to harbor her.”

Lord Petyr’s eyes narrow in contemplation. “Why would anyone do that?  The wrath of Bronze Yohn is not something his smallfolk are like to risk.”

The tall guard shrugs inside his armour.  “For the promise of a place in Winterfell.  For the promise of a piece of high-born ginger sweetness.”

Baelish regards his adjutant keenly.  Ser Oswyld Waxley is not a dolt of a man; his shrewd mind and amoral soul have proven him to be a natural second to the Lord of Chaos.  A man to be heeded.

Littlefinger does so now.

“Take twelve of the best men and scour the countryside.  From Ironoaks to Gulltown.  Every farm, every hovel, every wold.  Spare no courtesies.”

His tone grows grim.

“She must be found.”

 


	15. CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ka-thump ka-thump!

Four hooved feet hit the dirt in rhythmic sequence, sending up clay-like clods.  Graceful forelegs are the first to take the weight of the airborne equine, as it clears the jump with its powerful body propelled by rippling hindquarters.  Upon regaining terra firma, the beautiful animal tosses its head, pulling at the reins held loosely by its rider.  But with deft pressure of her knees and a sharp clucking sound, Lenah maintains control and speed, approaching the next rail at a canter.

_One…two…three…_ she counts the strides in her head, then clutches the horse’s mane, raising her leather-clad hips and leaning forward, at one with her mount as they round up and over the hurdle.

Changing direction, the pair take a shallow leap over a lingering puddle, leaving them out of synchronization for the next obstacle.  The horse balks, and Lenah must walk it in a circle to re-set focus. 

Their second attempt is a thing of equestrian beauty, bringing out words of praise from the woman in the saddle.

  
“Good work, Strider!”  Lenah reaches down to pat the proud stallion’s neck, fighting a fleeting feeling of vertigo when she takes her eyes off the horizontal.

So very far it is to the ground, her brain reminds her capriciously.

_Well, I can’t very well be jumping plough ponies_ , she retorts silently.

The elegant chestnut is by far the tallest horse Lenah has every ridden, as well as the most agile, and has become her preferred steed.  With the threat of ambush by the Hill Tribes a real concern, she does not ride outside the keep during Bronn’s absences – a lesson from their earliest days that she has finally learned.  In the interim, this arena of jumping challenges satisfies the horsewoman in her.

But nothing will satisfy the worried lover within.

_How long is it reasonable to expect this rescue mission to take_? she frets, as they sail smoothly over another crossbar.  Weeks?  Months?  _And what if he doesn’t return?_

The very thought is a knife in her belly.

“Damn you, Bronn!” she mutters under her breath.  “Don’t you **_dare_** leave me alone to raise this child.”

About to begin the return circuit, Lenah’s eye suddenly spies movement in the courtyard – four figures on horseback.  Strider fights the halter when Lenah pulls tight the reins in surprise.  An overjoyed smile leaps across her face, followed by a surge of recklessness through her veins.

“Ha!”

With a throaty shout, she urges Strider into a full gallop, bypassing the course down the sideline, rapidly reaching the limits of the enclosure.  At the last minute, she rises out of her seat, bracing her weight into her heels, as they clear the corral fence in a thundering arc.

They pull up before the returning travellers a bit breathless, Lenah for more than one reason.

Like a cavalry commander conferring with his general, Bronn slowly walks his horse forward to pull alongside – the humans face-to-face, the equines nose-to-tail.  For a moment, his blue eyes flicker with something unreadable, while his lady blinks back tears.  Then their lips meet in the space between, with Lenah having to lean a bit farther to close the gap.

All of a sudden her vertigo returns in full force, as a strong arm hooks around her waist, pulling her onto the shoulders of Bronn’s horse and fully into his embrace.  Their kiss ends abruptly on her startled giggle, only to resume in earnest – a hungry press of soft flesh and teasing tongues.

Nearby, a bored Jaime emits an impatient sigh.

“Come with me, ladies,” he says, escorting the others towards the stables.  “These two have never been shy.  And they seem to forget they are no longer newlyweds.”

“It has not yet been a year,” interjects Brienne mildly, as one who can mark the time against her own romance.  “They are entitled.”

“Seems like longer,” Jaime mutters, clucking to the now riderless chestnut to coax it to follow.

As they move way, Sansa’s intrigued gaze lingers over her shoulder, affording her a glimpse of Bronn’s hand snaking up under Lenah’s blouse.

Oblivious to all else, the reunited lovers fill their senses with the cool touch of silk, the warm smell of leather, the unique tastes of shared intimacy.  Eventually they pause for air, and for Lenah to shift her buttocks uncomfortably.

“Is that the horn of your saddle, or are you indeed happy to see me?’ she quips with a lop-sided grin.

“A bit of both, I reckon,” Bronn chuckles against her neck, inhaling the scent of her rosemary-washed hair and her perspiration-pricked skin.  He’s beginning to recognize some advantages to this matrimonial state of affairs.  At the end of a campaign, an unwedded sellsword is an unbedded sellsword, unless he has coin and whores both at hand.

His lips travel back up her throat, leaving a trail of heat and a hint of moisture.

“Miss me, wench?”

Eyes closed in sensual appreciation, Lenah thinks blindly, _More than you know_.

Aloud she murmurs, “Had you gone somewhere?  I hadn’t noticed.”

“Let me remind you what you’ve been missing,” Bronn growls with purpose, claiming another bruising kiss.

Thus persuaded, Lenah amends her answer. 

“Too much,” she breathes, the betrayal of her emotions near-complete.  “Too much have I missed you.”

“Good,” Bronn grunts, holding her ever tighter, stealing her reason with his passion.

After a moment, Lenah surfaces to pose a languid return-challenge.

“You…me?”

Another guttural.  “You’ll see,” he promises, surreptitiously patting the travel bag behind his thigh.

Completely certain she knows what he means, Lenah gives a wry smile.  Sadly, some duties as hostess await her first.  She arches an eyebrow at the departing backs of their guests.

“Success, I see.”  She looks up at her husband anxiously.  “Were you spotted?”

A tight-lipped head shake follows her query.

“We were clean away,” Bronn reports curtly.  “But she will have been missed.  


 

**********************

 

 

Like a nervous bird caught out in the open, Sansa twitches when the rap on the door comes.  After a moment of indecision, she rises from the bed, swinging open the portal to find the lady of Copper Keep.

“I’ve come to ensure you have everything you need.”  Lenah surveys the road-weary young woman and the room beyond with concern.  The mattress coverings are undisturbed, the pillows still plump – she has not rested.  She has not even removed her boots.

Sansa gives a polite smile as she steps aside for her hostess to enter.  “Yes, Lady Lenah.”

From its perch on her hip, Lenah holds forward a wide, short-handled basket.  “Here are a few personal items.”

Sansa notes with gratitude a nest of clean smallclothes and washing squares, cradling a bar of perfumed soap and a sturdy hairbrush.

“My goodmaid Delores will draw you a bath,” continues Lenah solicitously, while her eye travels up and down Sansa’s frame.  “As for a fresh wardrobe…my own gowns will fall far too short on you, but there are others in storage that will do.” 

Lenah winces inwardly.  _Perhaps fresh is a relative term_ , she allows, realizing that must and dust  will have collected with time.

By way of explanation, she adds dryly, “The previous mistress of this keep was apparently a much taller woman than I.”

“You are very kind,” responds Sansa, taking her gift and walking it to the dressing table.  “Please send in someone to brush my hair.”

She pulls her tangles tresses around over one shoulder and plucks out a piece of dried grass, wishing she could instead summon a certain Lorathi handmaiden.  It had been so comforting once upon a time, when she had Shae to pamper her, to protect her.

Lenah intakes a quick breath and holds it, before answering with a short laugh.

“This is not King’s Landing.  My household staff is small,” she says easily, though the gentle rebuke is there.  “We do many things for ourselves here.”

“My apologies,” murmurs Sansa in confusion, her eyes darting to the floor.

“Do not be troubled,” counters Lenah with kindness, reminding herself how fragile this one must feel.  “You are safe here, Sansa.  No one will hurt you.  No one will use you.”

An ember of hope sparks in Sansa’s glacial blue eyes, along with a kernel of curiosity.  The two of them, both once fated to fall into Lord Roose’s clutches, both snatched away by the same rescuers.  Sansa meets Lenah’s gaze directly.

“Lady Brienne said you were once abducted by Bolton banners.”

Behind Lenah’s eyelids a vision flashes, of Locke and his men bursting into the bathing house at Three Wolves.  She hears the echoes of her own screams as they carried her from her home.  She feels again her terror, her helplessness. 

_Why does she bring this up?_ Lenah wonders, verging on anger.

Her next words come out guardedly, grudgingly.

“They had me halfway to the bastard Ramsey before Bronn, Brienne, and Jaime freed me.”

“We have this in common then, you and I,” remarks Sansa thoughtfully, as though in answer to Lenah’s silent question.  The lady of Copper Keep raises her chin, inviting elaboration.

“Ramsey has been declared true Bolton and is now the heir,” reveals Sansa.  “I was to be his bride.”

Lenah’s anger melts away as quickly as it formed, replaced by a revulsion she cannot keep from her features.

“What do you know, my lady?” queries Sansa fearfully, when she sees the trail of trauma play across Lenah’s face.

Crude hints, cruel suggestions, promises of pain and degradation – the picture of sadism painted by Ramsey’s men is something that Lenah cannot put into words, let alone share.

Meanwhile, in the absence of an immediate reply, Sansa fills the air with additional vengeful speculation.

“I know nothing of him, other than that his family plotted to kill mine and steal Winterfell.”

Still silence.

“What do you know?!” demands Sansa more forcefully.

Finally Lenah lets go of the haunting and speaks.

“I know we have both been spared horrors we can scarce imagine.”

She steps closer, taking the Stark girl’s hand in hers.  As one, the two women release a long-held breath.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to anyone who actually knows about horse jumping. I watched some You Tube and read some Wikipedia.


End file.
